Well there’s one picture I will never understand. Especially the day after St. Pat’s.
Fermi Catalogs the Gamma-ray SkyGamma Rays and Gamma Ray Bursts are super cool, as in neat.
If I was 30 years younger. Okay 40 ;-), but as wise as I am today, I'd make them my life's study.
Not to long ago Gamma Ray Bursts were 'thought' to come from only our Milky Way Galaxy. Then they did a study to 'confirm' this - which was what they expected to find, only 'bursting' along our galactic plane. But that's not what they found.
They found that these Gamma Ray Bursts were coming from the farthest reaches of the *known* Universe, 14.5 Billion LYr's away. These were 'Super Gamma Ray Bursts' caused by a HUGH Star, and I mean HUGH, going Suer Nova. But that was not good. Thanks to good ole Einstein their results meant that with the Energy released, it would take MORE MASS than our entire Universe contains! It looked like E=mc2 was out the window. Could Einstein have been wrong?
They pondered this major problem and concluded that Super Gamma Rays Bursts are like Pulsars from a Black Hole, rays shooting out both ends of its axis, not exploding in all directions. With that being the case E=mc2 worked again and all was right in the world of physics.
But here's the bad news -- 'Super Gamma Rays Bursts' are kind of like the 'Death Star' in the 1st Star Wars movie. If one 'bursts' and its axis was aimed at the Earth we'd all be cooked in a nanosecond as soon as it reached us. So for all we know there could be one coming at us now and it could hit any time. So when I think of this, I say the hell with Global Warming.
But there's something else with this conclusion. If one Gamma Ray Beam is coming towards us from 14.5 Billion LYr's away, that means the beam from the other end is going the same distance the other way.
Ergo, our Universe has to be 'older' and 'bigger' than 14.5 LYr's, MORE LIKE 29! We just can't see it. Or, it could be 'infinite' and that's a bad word in physics. ;-)