Looks like a meager bulge light curve to me.
Posted on 03/02/2005 5:21:21 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A strange and powerful burst of radio waves from near the center of our galaxy may have come from a previously unknown type of space object, U.S. astronomers reported on Wednesday.
Other experts nicknamed the mysterious source a "burper" and said there would be a race to scan for similar radio bursts.
"We hit the jackpot," said Scott Hyman, a professor of physics at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, who led the study.
"An image of the Galactic center, made by collecting radio waves of about 1 meter (3 feet) in wavelength, revealed multiple bursts from the source during a seven-hour period from Sept. 30 to Oct. 1, 2002 -- five bursts in fact, and repeating at remarkably constant intervals."
The burst came from the direction of the middle of the Milky Way galaxy, of which Earth is a part, and could have originated from as far away as 24,000 light-years or from as close as 300 light-years. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.
It cannot have come from a celestial object known as a pulsar, the researchers write in this week's issue of the journal Nature, but the source could be a brown dwarf of a magnetar -- an exotic star with an extremely powerful magnetic field.
They have named the presumed object GCRT J1745-3009.
"GCRT J1745-3009 will cause a stampede of further observations," Shri Kulkarni and Sterl Phinney of the California Institute of Technology wrote in a commentary.
"But perhaps even more important is the possibility that the radio heavens contain other fast radio transients (which, in anticipation of a trove of discoveries, we nickname 'burpers')."
Hyman and colleagues made the discovery by studying observations made by the National Science Foundation (news - web sites)'s Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico.
the source could be a brown dwarf of a magnetar -- an exotic star with an extremely powerful magnetic field.
Hmmmm? "... a new heaven and a new earth" comes to mind.
plasmatics
Too much of my mom's curry comes to mind.
May 20, 1998
"Magnetar" discovery solves 19-year-old mystery
Dead stars have afterlife active with starquakes, bursts of gamma rays
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast20may98_1.htm
magnetar, a neutron star with a super-strong magnetic field a thousand trillion times stronger than Earth's.
LOL!
There was a picture called the 'Eye of God' making the rounds on FR. Thank you science for confirming what I already believe. I don't believe for a minute we are here by 'mistake'.
We need to deploy a new Gas-X-ray telescope to check this out...
Bush's fault.
Too much Tex-Mex food?
It's the projectile vomiting you have to worry about.
Looks like a meager bulge light curve to me.
I don't believe we are here by mistake either.
I don't remember seeing the picture the "Eye of GOD" - do you know where I might be able to find it ..??
Thanks! Isn't it awesome??
I, I,...ay ay ay I KNEW that's where you were going,...didn't we see them at CB's, Baby Let's Eat Out Tonight eventual suicide in the woods of Connecticut, tsk,tsk
Great picture. What exactly is it?
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