Posted on 09/23/2003 12:01:51 PM PDT by bedolido
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. - A new satellite could offer more information into the gamma ray bursts that occurred billions of years ago.
Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory discovered the strange phenomenon 30 years ago, but much about it - such as why they happen - remains mysterious.
In May 2004, when a new satellite called SWIFT launches, they might finally be able to unravel some of the mysteries about gamma ray bursts.
"We've had to create an explanation to fit what we're seeing, rather than understanding what gamma ray bursts are by predicting them," said Ed Fenimore, a Los Alamos astrophysicist. "What we know is that something has to accelerate a huge mass - close to the mass of the sun - to close to the speed of light in a very short period of time. We just don't know why that's happening."
Scientists discovered the phenomenon in 1973, when satellites designed to detect Soviet nuclear weapons tests from space picked up strange readings.
"The thing that would strike you about them is how intense they are," Fenimore said.
If a person could hear a gamma ray burst, it would deafen him. If he could see one, it would blind him, Fenimore said.
"You'd think with that intensity they'd be close by, but it turns out these things are on the other side of the universe - they're billions of years old," Fenimore said.
Scientists have been studying gamma ray bursts with the High Energy Transient Experiment satellite. Fenimore designed software on that satellite to quickly locate a gamma ray burst and send tracking data to ground based telescopes, which try to catch the end of the event before it disappears.
"The problem is we can't predict these things," Fenimore said. "Some happen so fast we miss them entirely. It takes about 60 seconds for us to get everything in place, and by then many of them have already faded."
SWIFT - a gamma ray burst detection satellite with a telescope on board - will help scientists see the phenomenon from outside of the Earth's atmosphere. It may not track them any faster than HETE, but because it is outside of the Earth's atmosphere, it can see the events even if the sky is cloudy or it's the middle of the day.
Earth-based telescopes are able to see perhaps one gamma ray burst a day, but about 1,000 happen every day that they can't see for a variety of reasons.
"Hopefully, as we catch more of them we'll be able to catch one as it goes through most of its life cycle," Fenimore said.
Fenimore and his colleagues at Los Alamos have designed several components and the software triggering systems on SWIFT.
Ar, ar, ar!
Is somebody out there saying "engage"? lol.
The most likely natural explanation is some sort of beaming, along a narrow axis, that happens to be pointed in our direction, from AGN or BH events.
Thing is, without beaming the intensity in each event needs to be very high (though AGNs may handle that). But the frequency is the observed one. If there is beaming then the energy per event could be much much lower (perhaps vanilla BH level). But there would also be far more of these events going on than we see, because there would be other cases pointed in other directions.
Thing is, if that were the cause you'd expect them to become more common as the universe got older (more time to form galaxys and compactify big GN BHs), not less. But the ones we see are all pretty darn far away.
Well ... uh, isn't that how it's supposed to be done?
Yes, sir...it's called science. ;^)
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