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Scientists detect huge radiation blast

Friday, 20 February 2009

Astronomers have detected the strongest radiation blast from deep space ever known, exceeding the power of 9,000 exploding stars.

The gamma ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away, and its light has taken most of the age of the universe to reach us. Scientists believe such bursts occur when stars run out of fuel and collapse to form a black hole.

It has been calculated that the material emitting the gamma rays must have been moving at 99.9999 per cent of the speed of light. The explosion was spotted by a Nasa telescope.

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Wait a second
[info]ambersanity wrote:
Saturday, 21 February 2009 at 03:11 pm (UTC)
It had a power level of Over 9,000 stars?!?!?!?!?!
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[info]rozr wrote:
Saturday, 21 February 2009 at 04:19 pm (UTC)
Thrilling stuff.
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Curtains
[info]chiennoir wrote:
Saturday, 21 February 2009 at 06:30 pm (UTC)
I suppose if anyone was living in the vicinity, it would have been curtains for them. However, considering how close it was to the birth of the universe, I doubt if life could have evolved so far.
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Re: CURTANS
[info]charityplayer wrote:
Saturday, 21 February 2009 at 08:41 pm (UTC)

SPEED KILLS
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Re: CURTANS
[info]testing_times wrote:
Saturday, 21 February 2009 at 11:36 pm (UTC)
so, KILL YOUR SPEED

99.9999 per cent of the speed of light? Let's really push the boat out, shall we, and call it a round 100?

It's light has taken most of the age of the universe to reach us... woopidoo, can't wait for the next one!! ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...



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Re: KURTANS
[info]charityplayer wrote:
Monday, 23 February 2009 at 04:16 pm (UTC)

VELOCITY
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speed of light
[info]superaussiehero wrote:
Sunday, 22 February 2009 at 12:18 am (UTC)
I read somewhere that the speed of light is the absolute maximum speed possible anyhow, anywhere, any time. I also read somewhere that in the first three quarters of a second after the 'Big Bang', the universe expanded rapidly to approximately one third of it's current size which is one heck of a lot more than three quarters of 186,000 miles. Does this mean that the speed of light is only relative to time as we conceive it and that the three quarters of a second in question probably passed by over a four-point-odd billion years and was distorted by the actual speed of the expansion. Working on this theory we could say that the universe is actually only two-and-a-quarter seconds or so old (give or take a little to allow for speed fluctuations) if the universe is expanding a a constant rate. If the expansion rate is slowing down then the universe is probably only really roughly half the age we attribute it to be. I find this all a little confusing someone please help me before I go insane.
Pete
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Re: speed of light
[info]testing_times wrote:
Sunday, 22 February 2009 at 12:04 pm (UTC)
Pete, may I refer you to 'charityplayer' re: above.
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Insane Universe
[info]chiennoir wrote:
Sunday, 22 February 2009 at 08:14 am (UTC)
Maybe, I'm already insane, but doesn't time do rather odd things in singularities such as black holes and big bangs & crunches. I mean doesn't an infinitisimal amound of time stretch to eternity - or summat like that, That means the university took an eternity to get born, which implies that it still in the process of being born, therefore (ergo) we do not yet exist. It's really fantastic being insane!
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Re: Insane Universe
[info]testing_times wrote:
Sunday, 22 February 2009 at 12:06 pm (UTC)
Chiennoir, may I refer you to a doctor?
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It's a mad, mad world
[info]chiennoir wrote:
Sunday, 22 February 2009 at 07:39 pm (UTC)
testing_times - You pay me a great complement. If you think certain things through to their logical conclusion, you may well end up mad and needing to see a doctor. On the other hand, think of the implications of our not yet existing. It means we only potentially exist; we don't actually exist at all. (That makes a great deal of sense to me!) All that seems to follow from Einstein's Theory of Relativity in relation to such phenomena as black holes, big bangs and crunches, not to mention travelling at the speed of light, which from the point of view of, say, a photon and not an outsider, is travelling at an infinite velocity. The mind boggles when you start to think of the implications of all these theories. On the other hand, we could all return to our 'sane' day to day 'reality' and forget all about it.

Of course, I meant universe, not university, which was a verbal slip, no doubt due to the close proximity of the word "eternity".
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Re: It's a mad, mad world
[info]testing_times wrote:
Monday, 23 February 2009 at 08:53 am (UTC)
I stand corrected. It is I that needs a doctor (or a patient physics tutor).
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Radiation Blast
[info]cjmacgyver wrote:
Sunday, 22 February 2009 at 08:25 pm (UTC)
So tell me are any portions of the blast focused enough to irradiate our blue planet? Oddly enough I just finished reading a sci fi novel that was written about the very situation. In the novel it was necessary to evacuate the entire population, dig redoubts, or build a shield. Even with the redoubts the planet would be uninhabitable for 300 years. Sounds like the Mayans and Nostradomus might be right.......
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Big bang and how long.
[info]mickey_dripping wrote:
Sunday, 22 February 2009 at 10:40 pm (UTC)
Er. excuse me, being a bit astronomically dim, but how can something that has been travelling for over 12 billion years is just reaching us when every thing is claimed to have started at the same point in space with a "Big Bang" 14 billion years ago?
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Scientists detect huge radiation blast
[info]kitfoot wrote:
Monday, 23 February 2009 at 12:38 pm (UTC)
12.2 million yrs ago the the universe was much smaller & the light from the blast would have reached us much earlier. How can this be?
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Re: Scientists
[info]charityplayer wrote:
Monday, 23 February 2009 at 04:34 pm (UTC)


THAT KAN BE IF YOU MULTIPLY THE VELOCITY OF LIGHT BY THE VELOCITY OF DARKNESS
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speed of light
[info]jiharmer wrote:
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 at 10:31 pm (UTC)
The speed of light is the maximum speed obtainable within the universe.
However this doesn't stop the universe itself expanding faster than that.
The period when it did is known as inflation.
This is why the universe looks the same in any direction that you look, even though there's not yet been time for light, or any other information to travel from one side to the other.
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