Posted on 03/09/2008 11:11:33 PM PDT by neverdem
Thanks to a lucky break and an overactive galaxy, astronomers have for the first time caught a massive star in the act of exploding. An X-ray outburst recently recorded by NASA's Swift satellite suggests that researchers began viewing the violent demise of a star in the galaxy NGC 2770 just a few seconds after the first X rays arrived at Earth, and hours before the first visible-light fireworks.
Most supernovas aren't identified until they generate an outpouring of visible light, long after key information about the size and other properties of the collapsing star has vanished. The new finding suggests that astronomers using wide-angle X-ray telescopes could routinely witness the very beginnings of hundreds of supernova explosions each year, suggest Alicia Soderberg and her colleagues in an online posting.
Astronomers have previously observed the immediate aftermath of a related class of stellar explosions, the demise of massive stars that are signaled by gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful eruptions in the universe. But in each of the four cases for which researchers have firmly established the link between a supernova and a gamma-ray burst, the bright visible-light afterglows of the bursts hide the information-rich early emissions from the supernovas, Soderberg's team notes.
Early, X-ray signs of supernovas have been predicted for 4 decades but never before been found.
On Jan. 9, Soderberg and her colleagues were using an X-ray telescope on Swift to study a supernova in NGC 2770 that had been discovered 10 days earlier. Just as Swift began observations of this supernova, it recorded a fresh spike of X rays from another region in the galaxy that lasted for about 7 minutes. On Jan. 11, using the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, Soderberg and her colleagues identified the visible-light fingerprint of the new supernova, now dubbed...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
The thought of gamma ray bursts scares me.
Are they sure it wasn’t due to the “Hillary Effect” because of the Wyoming results?
If Al Gore and his band of Chicken Littles really wanted to protect life on this planet, they should work on a ozone layer recovery process.
Pharmaceuticals Found in Drinking Water
McCain steps into debate over cause of autism
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Yeah.....I thought it was getting warmer just didn’t know why.
Bush’s fault
AHA! Maybe now THEY will believe me!
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
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Wow, fantastic! Just when you think astronomers will never have an opportunity to observe a supernova from the moment it blows, unless they get luckier than the luckiest lottery player who ever lived, along comes a serendipitous find that says that they're probably going to be able to observe hundreds of them each year from a few moments before they blow, right on through all the fireworks. Too amazing. Bound to lead to a much, much richer understanding of the inner workings of stars!
I think you can go with SPF 10 and ditch the umbrella for awhile;-)
Ah, you beat me to it.
It has already happened here, during the last 41,ooo years. Try reading The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes.
Talk about sleepless nights...
These two scenarios, one of a lethal Gama ray burst, and the other, with a lack of CO2 to offset the sun in a cooling cycle, are doomsday scenarios. In one way we get microwaved. In another, we get frozen. The Chicken Littles would love that. TV dinners anyone?
So many different things could go wrong--asteroids the most likely. The only real protection is to develop a space program that sets up self sustaining human colonies on other planets and, long term, outside the solar system. If the human race spreads out enough, extinction events are much less likely.
Of course, Al and his buds regard humans as a cancer on the Earth. The last thing they want is to have us ruin the rest of the Galaxy also.
I thought X-rays and visibile light both traveled at the same speed. Why would the X-rays arrive first?
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