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Hubble Finds Unidentified Object In Space
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:17 PM
from the cosmic-dust-on-the-lens dept.
from the cosmic-dust-on-the-lens dept.
Gizmodo is reporting that the Hubble space telescope has found a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere. Some are even suggesting that this could be a new class of object. Of course, without actually understanding more about it, the speculation seems a bit wild. "The object also appeared out of nowhere. It just wasn't there before. In fact, they don't even know where it is exactly located because it didn't behave like anything they know. Apparently, it can't be closer than 130 light-years but it can be as far as 11 billion light-years away. It's not in any known galaxy either. And they have ruled out a supernova too. It's something that they have never encountered before. In other words: they don't have a single clue about where or what the heck this thing is."
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Submission: Hubble Finds Unidentified Object in Space by Anonymous Coward
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Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
That's no moon!
Hubble Windex: For that Deep [Space] Shine! (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly! NASA obviously needs to do a better job of keeping the lense clean. :-P
Joking aside (at least I HOPE I'm joking!), I have to wonder if this wasn't a large matter/antimatter event. Given that the "object" was described as suddenly appearing, increasing in brightness, then falling off until it disappeared.
Current physics, to my understanding, postulate that the universe had to have consisted of 50/50 matter and antimatter at the beginning. One of the current puzzles the LHC is trying to solve is, what happened to all the antimatter?
Since this is open space, it stands to reason that clouds of matter and antimatter may still be floating around, undisturbed. If the two attracted each other over a cosmically long period, we may be seeing the resulting fireworks.
That's my best guess, anyway.
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Re:Hubble Windex: For that Deep [Space] Shine! (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it's another Alien civilization that just annihilated itself in nuclear\fusion\antimatter\something hellfire?
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Re:Hubble Windex: For that Deep [Space] Shine! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hubble Windex: For that Deep [Space] Shine! (Score:5, Funny)
Correction, its an alien civilization that just did their first experiment on the LHC.
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Re:Hubble Windex: For that Deep [Space] Shine! (Score:5, Funny)
my money would be on a Vogon Construction crew
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Re:Hubble Windex: For that Deep [Space] Shine! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
This is what happens when God plays with lighters after eating mexican food.
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That's no moon. It's a space station. (Score:5, Funny)
FTA-
"Apparently, a scientist at the LHC declared that the object is similar to the flash that an Imperial Star Destroyer does when reaching Warp 10.
Re:That's no moon. It's a space station. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:That's no moon. It's a space station. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:That's no moon. It's a space station. (Score:5, Informative)
And a parsec is a measure of distance.
My thought (admittedly based on other folks on the 'net) is that the kessel run is a race from one point on the surface of the volume of Kessel, to another point on the far end of the volume.
The fact that you can do it in a particularly small number of parsecs suggests that you are getting really close to the even horizon of a black hole at the center of Kessel.
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Re:That's no moon. It's a space station. (Score:5, Funny)
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That's no Space Station, that's an LHC (Score:5, Funny)
a scientist at the LHC declared
LHC scientists then assured the public that it was not an LHC being used on a different planet by an alien civilization, then being burned in a fierce flash of particle fusion before being enveloped within a subsequent black hole. "The chances would be like winning the lottery ten times in a row" they said. "Not that we would know about any alien civilizations, their freaky purple skin and glowing eyes, or whether they were using an LHC modelled after the one we made on Earth. Speaking of which, I'm not really qualified to talk about it, because this is astronomy and has NOTHING to do with LHCs... Ha ha right? No more questions."
Next week, a new LHC song is promised from the CERN labs and should be another smash hit on Youtube. One of the scientists sung a few of the lines to us as a preview. "We didn't share our technology with a now-extinct alien race less than a few lightyears away. They were probably pretty dumb and annoying anyway. Let's turn this bugger on! Let's turn this bugger on! Smash some particles, yeah!"
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I'm betting (Score:5, Funny)
... it's a Bowl of Petunias, or a sperm whale (again).
All thermal sensors are jammed. (Score:5, Funny)
One shows a million degrees. The others, minus five thousand.
Aliens must own stock too. (Score:5, Funny)
It's obvious that this was the flash of an extraterrestrial civilization that just destroyed itself when it realized that all of its savings were tied up in Lehman Brothers stock.
Re:Aliens must own stock too. (Score:5, Funny)
It's clear to me... I just know... I just know what it is!
*Sporadic laughter again*
This is direct evidence of Xenu's lost civilization.
Best regards,
Dr. T. Cruise
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Re:Aliens must own stock too. (Score:5, Funny)
> My 10 year old photocopier can do that.
Your 10 year old photocopier can reproduce, so you don't have to.
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Ominous! (Score:5, Funny)
The 5th element (Score:5, Funny)
I know what it is... (Score:5, Funny)
...that dam' kid down the block with his laser pointer again!
Obvious answer (Score:5, Funny)
It's a gigantic sphere of single socks, nonworking ball point pens, car keys, reading glasses, coffee mugs....
Well, they have to go somewhere....
Probably. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's a rock.
Re:Probably. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's a rock.
A rock that appears suddenly and then disappears later? And is visible from light-years away? And has a spectral signature that doesn't match anything in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey? That's some rock.
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The Borg! (Score:5, Funny)
It's the Borg! I'm selling my Lehman stock now!
please stop with the inane star wars jokes (Score:5, Funny)
what is wrong with you people?
we all know deep in our hearts it is the decepticons
Modding system (Score:5, Interesting)
I clicked on here hoping someone with an astrophysics or cosmology background might be able to have a stab and guessing what this thing might be, or have something interesting to say about Hubble.
Re:Modding system (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Funny)
No kidding. I read the summary on the /. front page and thought to myself, "Wow, how boring. Don't think I'll be hitting that article." Then shortly thereafter, "Wait, did they say wild speculation?!" Here I am...
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Funny)
hahahahaa!!... Oh wait, you were serious...
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't get much funnier than getting your astronomy news from a gadget site.
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Informative)
You can change your preferences to change how various moderations affect the score. If you are annoyed by funny posts, change the funny moderation to be a -1 instead of a +1.
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Insightful)
How insightful can a comment be when even the NASA astronomers don't know what it is? It's a post of ignorance, i.e. there's nothing more to be said unless someone has more data. The funny's just filling the void that would otherwise be filled with the chirping of crickets.
In the absence of insight, funny wins out.
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Funny)
Please tell me more about these space crickets when you get a chance.
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Interesting)
If I had to guess, I'd say it's an *extremely* distant explosion (perhaps the hypernova of low-metallicity star), based on the weird light curve and the complete lack of an associated visible parent object. But I wouldn't bet more than a beer on that hypothesis.
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Informative)
Tm
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Re:Modding system (Score:5, Informative)
I do wish the Funny mod wouldn't make so many posts appear so prominently on a thread.
If that ever changed, I'd stop reading it. I already get all the dry tech news I need, but come to Slashdot for the twisted geek view on things. A huge part of that is a shared sense of humor, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Think of Slashdot as a bar you go to after work. Sure, you'll hear some serious conversations, but you'll hear a lot more people telling jokes and enjoying themselves away from the office.
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Scooped! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm picturing a staff meeting at Engadget where the editor is yelling, "If Gizmodo beats us to press with a previously unknown class of celestial object one more time, heads are gonna roll around here!"
Loop (Score:5, Funny)
Sky and Telescope Article (Score:5, Informative)
The Sky and Telescope article [skyandtelescope.com] is much better than the Gizmodo blog [gizmodo.com]. The article explains why it can't be closer than 130 ly due to no parallax [wikipedia.org], though IDK why they didn't use a more sensitive satellite for measuring parallax of objects up to 1600 ly away. Maybe it was only seen after the fact, or the other satellite was not sensitive enough? The thing could not be farther than 11 billion ly either, since otherwise the light would be distorted as it passed through interstellar hydrogen clouds (i.e. "cosmic hydrogen absorption in its spectrum"). The Sky and Telescope article even includes a reference to the original paper describing the phenomenon [arxiv.org]. I suggest you read that article instead. It is much more interesting!
I bet... (Score:5, Funny)
... its dimensions are 1 by 4 by 9
Well, Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Gamma rays and other frequencies (Score:5, Informative)
Did we observe anything with our other space telescopes? Gamma ray burst?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst_progenitors [wikipedia.org]
There are astronomical phenomena we've theorised to exist, but so far have had little if any observations of such. Take this little beauty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark-nova [wikipedia.org]
Okay, so our astrophysicists are throwing that one out there. Perhaps we have seen a few - SN2006gy, SN2005gj, SN2005ap - but maybe we're kidding ourselves, and this is the Real Thing.
What do we call it when a quasar effectively goes supernova? (Not hypernova, that is reserved for very large stars.) Could a quasar even do this?
Perhaps what we've witnessed is the formation - or destruction - of a truly exotic object. And no, we don't have to resort to Dark Matter.
Hey! (Score:5, Funny)
Where did CERN go???
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:5, Funny)
Mike broke the Hubble! Mike broke the Hubble!
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Re:they found God ? (Score:5, Funny)
When god is a bit more impressive than 21st magnitude, let me know.
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Re:Logical conclusion (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it was observed with multiple telescopes, so it's not an artifact. The full paper can be found here: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0809/0809.1648v1.pdf [arxiv.org]
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Re:Is this for real??? (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0809/0809.1648v1.pdf [arxiv.org]
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