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- indochris609, on 04/28/2009, -8/+214"From the burst's perspective, Earth's formation lay 8.5 billion years in the future."
ughughughhughughuhjhduhuguhghuhgMINDASPLODE - AboveandBeyond, on 04/28/2009, -3/+206Time has ended....it just hasn't reached us yet...
- shaunj66, on 04/28/2009, -3/+128What the camera didn't pick up...
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/600/firinmah.jp ... - d4nie1, on 04/27/2009, -2/+122Far out man,
- the2989, on 04/28/2009, -2/+84*****
- STKD, on 04/28/2009, -11/+85The Bible covers this time frame right?
Right...? - richgustavson, on 04/28/2009, -6/+77Dugg because I was eating a Starburst at the time I read this.
- temporarysanity, on 04/28/2009, -7/+66Sure. It's the chapter called "never happened". Includes pretty much everything that ever happened.
- samard2002, on 04/28/2009, -1/+59I don't know, 5:00 seems pretty far away to me at this point.
- julian02392, on 04/28/2009, -1/+39I love the artist's illustration from the actual photo.
- notzak, on 04/28/2009, -0/+31Ah yes, the Very Large Telescope. Science sure does wonders with their creative descriptions
- jmpeagle, on 04/29/2009, -0/+26or Earth is a giant "Truman Show" and everything we see is created for our benefit. Maybe their are trillions of humans on different planets and everytime you masturbate, millions of them are watching on an alien youtube laughing their asses off.
- enklined, on 04/28/2009, -1/+21That's something like 123,936,480,000,000,000,000,000 Kilometers away.
O_o
I <3 Space. - Wilarseny, on 04/28/2009, -0/+19once you have a measured redshift, it's actually extremely simple. first-quarter/first-year astrophysics kind of stuff.
- aramova, on 04/29/2009, -0/+19"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
- Shigglyboo, on 04/28/2009, -0/+17you guys are awesome! I'm no expert, but I do love reading this type of stuff.
- inactive, on 04/29/2009, -1/+17*faps his magnificent penis*
This is my gift to you, universe. - hockeygiant2, on 04/28/2009, -0/+14The Big Bang didn't happen at one specific point in space. It was kind of...everywhere, if that makes sense. I've taken 2 astronomy classes in college, and I still can't really wrap my mind around it.
As I understand it: Big Bang, 630 million years later the GRB. If the universe were not expanding, it would take about 8.5 bil years to reach us (for the record, at about 9 billion years after the Big Bang is about the time the earth was formed, plus or minus a billion years). Due to the expanding of the universe, it takes 13.1 bil years to reach us, and we see it. - sodaman300, on 04/28/2009, -0/+14Those aren't ideas. Those are special effects.
- kevindoc, on 04/28/2009, -2/+16whoah :-o
- darkhand, on 04/28/2009, -2/+16So the Big Bang goes off, inflation occurs, matter spreads out, stars form, and 630 million years later this GRB goes off. The gamma rays are traveling out at nearly the speed of light the whole time, to come to hit us 8.5 billion years later. Provided all matter was spread out from a single point in the initial Big Bang, how did we beat the GRB here, and the matter that makes us up have time to form a solar system, planets, and evolve beings that could watch the light hit a sensor on a satellite? At the most we had a 630 million year head start. Shouldn't the GRB have already passed our location by before our slower moving matter got into place? Or am I missing something fundamental about the expansion of the universe and/or inflation?
- SchrodingersCar, on 04/28/2009, -1/+13Technically it's both
- GuitarGod181, on 04/29/2009, -0/+12God how high are you?
- GoodDamon, on 04/28/2009, -0/+12Oh yes, the simple astrophysics. Much easier for the average joe than all that high-level, complicated astrophysics.
- kilofox, on 04/28/2009, -5/+16Name calling doesnt make your point valid Eddie.
There are people that have a Pavlovian reaction to certain stories:
Violent Crime --- Someone always brings up Jack Thompson and Blaming Video Games. When something as horrible as multiple murder makes the news some people immediately think of defending something that is goddam hobby.
Science Article --- Someone always takes a swipe at Christianity (leaving out other religions that have creation stories that are as wacky as Christianity). I am 45 year old atheist. I get it... the biblical account of creation is BOGUS. One can search digg and find 10,000 phrases of "Jesus riding dinosaurs", "Flying Spaghetti Monster", "But the earth is only 10,000 years old".
Children are capable of sarcasm.... but they are still children.
If you or STKD have an axe to grind about religion ... try and come up with something a little ORIGINAL ok? We've heard it all before. Maybe you should petition Digg to start a Science vs Religion category, or Religion Sucks etc etc? - BrokenVisage, on 04/28/2009, -2/+12Here's some food for thought. The Universe is and has always been expanding at a rate much faster then the speed of light for some 13 billion years or however long ago we assume the Big Bang took place. At this point, even though galaxies are expanding and many are moving away from each other faster than the speed of light as well, the Universe is 99.99999998% empty space with almost all mass at it's center in comparison to its size at this point. Think about it, assuming the Universe doesn't create mass as it expands, all the mass it will ever have is pretty much situated at its center while expansion is happening all around it. Anyone who took Chemisty in High School has probably seen the illustration of an atom and what's inside it. That's pretty much how I think our Universe is except to our knowledge there are no boundaries. It's just a HUGE void of empty space that when compared to how far we are from the farthest object we can actually detect it must be like comparing an inch to a mile.
- vodkataime, on 04/28/2009, -0/+10***** you now I can't think about anything else.
- googooly, on 04/29/2009, -0/+10Dude that's a strongest line I ever heard this year.
- bulbasuar, on 04/29/2009, -1/+10PIME TARADOX!
- bimtott, on 04/29/2009, -0/+9That's pretty freaky, Bowie.
- the2989, on 04/28/2009, -1/+10What? NO WAY!!
- Wrathernaut, on 04/28/2009, -0/+9It's going to take a lot of gopher wood to build a bridge there.
- had3l, on 04/29/2009, -1/+9It's showing up now on my LSD screen.
- pln2bz, on 04/28/2009, -2/+10Re: "once you have a measured redshift, it's actually extremely simple. first-quarter/first-year astrophysics kind of stuff."
It's only easy because the textbook version for redshift ignores Halton Arp's observation of inherent quantization of redshift. The raw redshift value appears to possess multiple components. Quasars exhibit this quantization. But, acceptance of Arp's observations has met tremendous resistance since it would undermine the very simplicity you speak of, and cast doubt upon the notion that we can rewind time back to a primordial Big Bang.
Intrinsic redshifts occur galaxy-wide, which show it is a subatomic phenomenon related to the structure of matter and subject to the near-instantaneous electric force. Within the dominant paradigm, matter and mass are inadequately defined. So, in order to incorporate Arp's findings on quasars, we must explore theories outside of the dominant paradigm.
If we assume an electrical relationship between matter and mass, we can understand how quasars can be newborn objects that have low mass and brightness and high intrinsic redshifts. With time, their mass increases and their intrinsic redshift decreases in quantum jumps. This shows that quantum effects also occur on a galactic scale. In other words, by accepting Arp's findings and assuming an electrical relationship to matter and mass, we see a path which enables the quantum to be related to the galactic. It's really unfortunate that more astrophysicists prefer the simple (disproven) mathematics over this alternative technique. They'd prefer to accept the claim that Arp's statistics are faulty than even so much as contemplate the ramifications. And yet, the answer to some of our most important questions demands that they do away with their simplistic models for redshift.
According to Wal Thornhill -- who has an excellent track record in terms of astrophysical predictions -- the change in intrinsic redshift/mass is due to a change in electrical polarization of the matter in the quasar. Quasars are ejected electron-deficient from a galactic plasma focus (Wal is a plasma physicist who specializes in the actual behavior of laboratory plasmas -- not the magnetohydrodynamics equations). So electrical polarization is low at first and increases as electrons flow into the quasar/galaxy. The intrinsic redshift decreases in quantum jumps simply because all matter is composed of a resonant system of electric charges and can only "jump" from one stable state to the next. It is the masses of the proton, neutron and electron that are increasing in tiny quantum jumps, which causes a decrease in intrinsic redshift.
But, astrophysicists are still at the point of assuming their way to thinking that redshift can only result from one cause -- which leads them to conclude that redshift is only a measure of distance and that quasars must therefore exist at the edge of the universe.
But, the public was never really given an opportunity to evaluate the imagery themselves. In order to believe that Arp is wrong, not only do we have to ignore the observation of bridges that connect some quasars and galaxies of vastly different redshifts, but we also have to ignore the quasars which have been observed to shine straight through galaxies AND we have to ignore the fact that Arp has noticed a specific sequence of quantization within the inherent redshift values. The chances of Arp being wrong on all counts -- especially the last -- are really quite improbable. And yet, astrophysical dogma is incredibly powerful. Arp is actually proof for the fact that nobody will stand in between an astrophysicist and his Big Bang.
When an astrophysicist tells you that we should believe their theory over our own eyes, this is the first clue that they are on the defense. When they start implicating the statistics employed, you know you've really got them on the ropes. But, sadly enough, history demonstrates that getting an astrophysicist to admit that he is wrong is nearly impossible. Sydney Chapman, for instance, refused to acknowledge that Kristian Birkeland was right on the cause for the auroras even after everybody else accepted that it was so. Chapman even refused to look at Birkeland's terrella experiment, recreated specifically for him by Hannes Alfven, to demonstrate that we could recreate the aurora by shooting charged particles at a "little Earth".
Such is the world we live in today. - cynic573, on 04/28/2009, -0/+8A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
|-o-| = = = = = PEW PEW - TikiGawd, on 04/28/2009, -0/+8More accurately, that's on the order of 271,069,383,429,981,985,000,000,000 cubits.
- inactive, on 04/28/2009, -0/+7Why did I go into engineering? Astronomy is way cooler.
- 8FoldPath, on 04/28/2009, -1/+7When it comes to time and space, from a cosmic perspective, they're the same thing.
- marktastic, on 04/28/2009, -2/+8The langoliers will get you....
- Demener, on 04/28/2009, -0/+6WTF kind of college are you at where incoming freshmen take Astrophysics?
- inactive, on 04/29/2009, -0/+6Everyone else is fake, this is all just a delusion of your mind.
- kilofox, on 04/28/2009, -9/+14Who cares? Cant you enjoy a science article for what it is? Why is this the first thing that pops into your mind? Or is this all you are capable of thinking?
I am going to take a shot that you are still in high school.
Right... ? - hiPpymIck, on 04/28/2009, -0/+5oh and
The most intense natural sources of light currently known in the cosmos are gamma-ray bursts, which occur when some massive stars collapse to form black holes or neutron stars, setting off powerful explosions as they do so
"My astrophysicist friends tell me that near a gamma-ray burst, they surmised that the [light] intensity probably gets to 1020 watts per square centimetre during the explosion," Ditmire told New Scientist. Light from the Texas Petawatt laser can reach about 100 times that level, he says. "For the briefest instant, over a very small volume, we'll have the brightest light in the universe."
so will someone far away out there see the laser with their telescopes ( - in 13 billion years that is) - hiPpymIck, on 04/28/2009, -0/+5didnt they recently make a new superlaser that produces the brightest light in the known universe
(in incredibly short bursts)
EDIT
yeah here
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13634
FTA
It can blast out infrared laser pulses that each have more than 1 petawatt of power. A petawatt is 1 million billion watts, far more than the output of all the world's power plants put together, which is measured in mere terawatts - pln2bz, on 04/29/2009, -0/+5You know, it's really pretty funny how people react when somebody has the gall to question the authority of astrophysicists. I mean, people will look up reviews for the movie they're thinking of seeing this weekend, but for some reason, when it comes to attaching a level of certainty or context to their beliefs about the universe, skepticism and criticism are viewed to be inherently foreign, hostile or just out of place.
Guys, astrophysics is not a laboratory science. It is people looking at imagery and deducing what they're seeing. It is people playing with equations and simulations to figure out how to explain what they're seeing. This process of deduction is inherently human -- which means that it is prone to error. We'd be wise to take this into consideration when rating the confidence level associated with the theories they're telling us.
We badly need skepticism and criticism within astrophysics. If people just accept everything that they are told without any historical or philosophical context, or any awareness of how we got to where we are now (epistemology), then this is -- technically speaking -- a cult or a religion (not science). When we stop trying to learn what the alternatives are to conventional wisdom, then we are placing faith in the idea that our beliefs are correct. Even the astrophysicists themselves should welcome outside criticism -- especially from the people who are creating the mathematical models they use to model cosmic plasmas.
I realize that a lot of people here take their pithy comments very seriously. And don't let me stand in the way of that. I enjoy it all. But, at the same time, every once in a while, it would be healthy if we all occasionally listened to the against-the-mainstream views as well -- for if the history of science is any indicator, many ideas that are currently conventional wisdom will one day be demonstrated to be false and even possibly silly.
You guys will eventually get used to me. In fact, some of you may even come to appreciate your newfound ability to believe something other than what is being crammed down your throats! - chaos7, on 04/27/2009, -1/+6our fists, your face
- AmpedMan, on 04/29/2009, -0/+5A mile is approx 63360x larger than an inch.
the distance we are from the farthest object we can detect is 7,701,055,830,988,416,000,000 miles away.
So it's more like comparing an inch to 121,544,441,776,963,636 miles :) - the2989, on 04/28/2009, -1/+6Let's see the alien after it got ***** up by a gamma ray burst!
- idarkiswordi, on 04/28/2009, -1/+6Better make it warp 6 Data.
- inactive, on 04/28/2009, -0/+5But by definition the CMB is not a physical 'thing' to see.
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