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Space Science

A Supernova In Red/Blue Plaid, Please 172

Posted by Hemos from the build-it-for-them dept.
Snotnose writes "The New York Times is reporting that scientists have found a a supernova factory . From the article, scientists estimated that the cluster alone, which contains up to a million stars, probably produces a supernova once every two years. That is a rate 50 times higher than usual in entire galaxies. Stars explode in Earth's home galaxy, the Milky Way, only once in a century.. Sounds pretty awesome. "
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A Supernova In Red/Blue Plaid, Please More

A Supernova In Red/Blue Plaid, Please

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  • That's alot of Blam
  • From a great distance. Dunno what it sounds like.

    Funny describing super-nova creation as awesome - that would seem to be the whole point.

    • In space? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Achoi77 ( 669484 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:15PM (#6070965)
      Dunno what it sounds like.

      Nothing, unless that cluster is where the Star Wars galaxy is. Then it'll prolly sound like BOOOOM. :-)

      • Re:In space? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:50PM (#6071255) Journal

        Actually, when the gas goes by the pressure goes from zero to something less than zero. The supernova does indeed have a sound, and it probably is some kind of "boom" full of turbulent white noise. Of course, that sound never reaches us in any meaningful way, and if it did we'd probably all be dead.

        IIRC, one of the NASA probes once recorded the sound caused by interractions in the rarified gas associated with Jupiter's intense magnetic fields.

        So yes, there are indeed acoustic waves in space. It's just that they aren't like the atmospheric waves we are used to. That doesn't mean they aren't sound. You can't hear very well under water, but dolphins can. You wouldn't say that the ocean is silent just because humans have lousy hearing there. Likewise, we shouldn't say that space is silent just because the pressure is extremely low and we'd immediately die there.

        That said, given that space is almost a vacuum, you can't produce sound in the usual manner. You have to introduce a gas into space that allows sound to propogate, and a supernova does just that.

        • Re:In space? (Score:5, Informative)

          by mperrin ( 41687 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @06:40PM (#6071717) Homepage
          IAAA (I Am An Astrophysicist) and
          Actually, when the gas goes by the pressure goes from zero to something less than zero.

          is flat-out wrong. Negative pressures do show up in certain exotic bits of physics, yes, but the interstellar medium isn't one of them.

          It's only an approximation to say that the pressure in space is zero. Very, very low, sure, but pressure will be some small positive number anywhere there exists an appreciable amount of gas (which is pretty much everywhere, actually). The pressure in the local ISM is something like 10e-19 bars, give or take a bit. As far as human hearing goes, that's certainly low enough to be effectively zero, but pressure waves can and do still exist, at positive but low pressures, albeit at frequencies and volumes far far below anything we could detect by ear.

          In fact, it's very useful to think of the intersteller medium as a sort of atmosphere surrounding the galaxy, complete with high and low pressure zones resulting from differential heating, winds and superwinds blowing between those regions, "weather" of a sort along the boundaries between regions of different temperatures, and so on. For more detail (a *lot* more detail) check out Spitzer's Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium or Osterbrock's Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei, hopefully available at your local university library.

          • read my comment above. It's not 'flat out wrong', although the english may be a bit awkward.

            IANAABIAAO (I Am Not An Astrophysicist, But I Am An Oceanographer)

  • Arthur C. Clarke said: (Score:5, Funny)

    by chessnotation ( 601394 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:10PM (#6070912)
    "Most supernovae are industrial accidents."

  • Old news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mondoz ( 672060 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:11PM (#6070918)
    The supernova factory is in merging galaxies, known as Arp 299, which is 140 million light-years from Earth.

    So this actually happened 140 million years ago...
    Slashdot is just now reporting on it? News from the 'mysterious future', indeed.

    • 140 Million year lag? (Score:4, Funny)

      by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:22PM (#6071030) Homepage
      Oh, my bad, that's only for non-subscribers.

    • Re:Old news... (Score:5, Funny)

      by fobbman ( 131816 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:29PM (#6071082) Homepage
      Not quite. This is actually a repost from about 83 million years ago [slashdot.org].

    • Its kind of intresting to think that dependeing on the number of stars in the galaxy and this astounding rate of "Big Bada Boom" (super novae) that the entire galaxy could be gone by now. I mean since were looking at old light, about a 140 million years old according to Mondoz, the whole galaxy could be just one big cluster of black holes. In fact, it seems logical that the rate of decay in the stars in that galaxy should be increasing since the radiation from one star going super novae tends to speed up th
      • Your premise is not without merit, though your conclusion is a bit farfetched. :^)

        I think that there will probably be a peak in the number of supernovaes per year (if it already hasn't happened). Over time, though, what will happen is that galaxies will age, resulting in fewer, more longer-lived stars (and possibly black holes). In other words, give it several hundred billion years, and most of what's left of the universe will be populated by very small red dwarves and super-dense objects. A few trillio
        • But then again, I could be rambling incoherently and am just killing time after work waiting for Adult Swim to start on Comedy Central tonight. :)

          Er, I meant "Cartoon Network". Silly brain farts.

    • Re:Old news... (Score:5, Funny)

      by alkali ( 28338 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:34PM (#6071134)
      So this actually happened 140 million years ago...
      Slashdot is just now reporting on it?

      No, actually, it was reported then, too. I'm afraid this story is yet another duplicate.

      [ A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...

      -1.4E08 11:23:45 Holy crap! Our star is exploding! (articles,science) (rejected) ]

  • Big Bada... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Fulcrum of Evil ( 560260 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:12PM (#6070921)

    *Boom*

  • Possible blackhole observatory (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phaetonic ( 621542 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:12PM (#6070923)
    From what I remember in Astronomy class, the only known way blackholes are known to form are after a supernova explosion. This can make for an interesting study on blackholes.
    • the supermassive blackholes found near the centers of some (most?) galaxies are not (as far as we /know/) formed from a supernova explosion.

      If I recall correctly...

    • Re:Possible blackhole observatory (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mondoz ( 672060 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:24PM (#6071047)
      http://plabpc.csustan.edu/astro/stars/holes.htm

      This page explains the link between Black holes & Supernovas...

      When stars of very large mass explode in a supernova, they leave behind a core which is so massive (greater than about 3 solar masses) that it cannot be stabilized against gravitational collapse by an known means, not even neutron degeneracy. Such a core is detined to collapse indefinitely until it forms a black hole, and object so dense that nothing can escape its gravitational pull, ot even light.

    • Re:Possible blackhole observatory (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Michael Woodhams ( 112247 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:44PM (#6071209) Journal
      I don't think this is accurate.

      Certainly it is a reasonable hypothesis that a very massive star might create a black hole when it supernovas. I don't know what the latest computer models say about it, nor do I know how reliable those models are believed to be - this stuff is hard to model right.

      Merging neutron stars are also likely to form black holes, and a neutron start that was accreting mass from a companion star could also.

      Our best evidence for black holes is for supermassive ones at the centers of galaxies. These would be the result of a long period of growth by swallowing stars. We can't know now where the original 'seed' black hole came from, but the vast majority of its mass did not come from a supernova.

      (I have a PhD in astronomy, but haven't done any for 10 years.)

      This looks like a job for Stupendous Man.
    • Note: IANAC (I am not a cosmologist)
      Big assed star, runns out of hydrogen starts burning helium, gets bigger, runs out of helium, reuns through all the elements up to iron, iron fusion takes energy, dosent give it. Interior of star runs out of energey, heat/light pressure go away, nothing supporting mass against pull.
      Now, if the star is less than 3 times our suns size(i think) it kind bounces in, rebounds out in a supernova and leaves a white dwarf star behind.
      If it is great er than that, it doent rebound,
    • the only known way blackholes are known to form are after a supernova explosion
      actually, there's a black hole on uranus...
      HAHAHA

  • Breaking News (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:14PM (#6070955) Homepage Journal

    Breaking News:

    SCO [sco.com] has announced that is has claim to all IP related to supernovae. SCO claims it bought the rights to view and reproduce all supernovae images from NASA [nasa.gov] back in 1996. Another suit, targetted against the Catholic Church [vatican.va] is insurance in case there really is a God that created the supernovae. If so, then God will be part of a future lawsuit.

    Being that NASA uses UNIX computers to do much of it's work, SCO is also including IBM [ibm.com], Novell [novell.com], Dennis Ritchie [bell-labs.com] and Ken Thompson [uga.edu] as defendents in the filings.

    Further updates as we get them.
    • SCO claims it bought the rights to view and reproduce all supernovae images from NASA back in 1996.

      Sure, we licensed them to look at an image once.

      TNANR, Twitter is not a NASA rep. until NASA pays his retainer fee.

    • Update:

      Shitty Corporate whOre (SCO) has filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against the Supernova Factory named "Arp 299." The lawsuit states that Arp 299 illegally appropriated Unix source code, specifically the code for the Unix command, arp.

      Unfortunately, the court papers will be delivered and a reply received sometime in the next 280 Million years.

      The trial is expected to take 10+e95 years, unless Arp 299 doesn't respond by July 1st, 280,002,003 AD in which case the judge's Grandson+e32 will declare SC
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • This just in:

      SCO has announced that it has claim to all IP related to making jokes about SCO's ridiculous IP claims. SCO claims it owns these rights as it made all the ridiculous claims and did not give anyone else, including IBM and "grub", to include them in jokes. Expect foolhardy yet belligerent litigation.

  • Links to articles through google (Score:5, Informative)

    by dprice ( 74762 ) <daprice@nOspam.pobox.com> on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:14PM (#6070958) Homepage

    For those of you who dislike the New York Times subscription requirement, here is a link [google.com] to a google news search of related articles.

    • Good call. That's much more useful than the links that people always post to circumvent the registration. I hope that catches on and replaces the other method. Spasibo bolshoye!

    • For those of you who dislike the New York Times subscription requirement, here is a link to a google news search of related articles.

      Since it's the New York Times we're talking about, and given recent events regarding the veracity of their reporting, maybe Slashdot should precede links to the Times with a disclaimer similar to the following (shamelessly ripped from the Truth Detector [rushlimbaugh.com]'s website):

      All facts and quotes appearing in the New York Times must be suspected of being made up, fabricated, altered

    • How about those of us who dislike the New York Times in general?

      I wonder if they have a sign out in front of their headquarters proclaiming that they've gone an entire three days so far without printing an outright lie...
      • > sign out in front of their headquarters proclaiming that they've gone an entire three days so far without printing an outright lie..

        Sort of like those "_#_ Days of Safety in Our Workplace!"

        They'd probably only need enough numbers for 1-10 or so.
    • Don't we _all_ dislike the NYT reg required thing?? It's not like the're usually the first/best source for the stories we get, anyway. /. should stop posting NYT articles, or work out an argreement like Google has with them.
  • Perhaps in the Future, when all these stars have gone supernova, it will be refered to as "The Maw Cluster"
    • > Perhaps in the Future, when all these stars have gone supernova, it will be refered to as "The Maw Cluster"

      Why? I don't get it.
      • this is because you are a star trek nerd.
        • > this is because you are a star trek nerd.

          Ah, I feel some semblance of understanding now, must be a Star Trek reference... and your logic is a bit off. If I was a Star Trek nerd I would have known what it was.
  • about a quip involving stellar flatulence and the consumption of inordinate quantities of n-dimensional beans, but it was too nebulous...

  • This was at space.com (Score:5, Informative)

    by DJ Rubbie ( 621940 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:16PM (#6070967) Homepage Journal
    This was covered two days ago by space.com [space.com]. They have pictures and good for people who didn't register on NYT.
    • I'll take annoying popups over registering to read some article written by the NYTimes journalists... and that way i dont have to register and get SPAMed!
      • rulethirty said:
        I'll take annoying popups over registering to read some article written by the NYTimes journalists... and that way i dont have to register and get SPAMed!
        Which should of read:

        My tinfoil hat is so large I can't see the screen well enough to register at NY-EVIL, however, it serves an added benifit of covering up popups at space.com

        (Karma's nuthin baby.)
      • Or you could run Mozilla and not get pop-ups at all!

  • A Brief History of the World - now with comments! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:19PM (#6070991)
    The History of the World. (Score:1, Funny)
    by Anonymous Coward on 23:58 Saturday 24 May 2003 (#6032631)
    2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.

    100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.

    10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.

    3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.

    2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.

    1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.

    490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".

    399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.

    336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.

    4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.

    A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.

    A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.

    A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.

    A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.

    A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.

    A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.

    A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

    A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)

    A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.

    A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).

    A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition.

    A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".

    A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."

    A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).

    A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words. A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.

    A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.

    A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.

    A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

    A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that mayn of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.

    A.D. 1769: James Watt pa
    • "A.D. 1948: Slashdot runs the infamous headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Shamefaced, the site quickly retracts the story when numerous readers point out that it is not news for nerds, stuff that matters."

      You missed one

      A.D. 1949: CmdrTaco posts the article "TRUMAN DEFEATED BY DEWEY."

  • Survey says (Score:5, Funny)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:19PM (#6070997)
    Although two factories have been built, and ISO certified, they are still looking for a suitable shipping entity with hubs in all five local galaxies. The Domestic Project Manager, Color Supernova Commercial Division, Rich Fortuna, was quoted as saying "All it takes is one damaged-in-transit supernova and this entire circus is history."

    Previous attempts at supernova mass production have met with failed rollouts and buyer chagrin. It is hoped that when all seven of these new style star factories are online, 3 and 4 G supernova will be readily available throughout this part of the Universe.

  • See what happens? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord Grey ( 463613 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:21PM (#6071007)
    Step 1: Advanced aliens create gigantic computers that generate so much heat -- much like some Intel chips -- that they resemble stars.

    Step 2: One alien says, "Imaging a Beowulf cluster of these...."

    Step 3: BOOM!

  • Oasis predicted it! (Score:3, Funny)

    by linuxbaby ( 124641 ) * on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:22PM (#6071025)
    I knew it! Those prophetic Gallagher brothers in Oasis predicted the whole thing [oasisinet.com]!
  • Anyone else think that this is Kip Durron running around with the Sun Crusher?

  • Yeah, but... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by ianjk ( 604032 )
    Does it run linux? ...huh?
  • Of course, Captain Janeway would tell you that these sorts of things are caused by wars in the Q Continuum...

  • Old News (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:24PM (#6071048)
    Apparently the New York Times likes to plagarize... Bill Bryson's new book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" [amazon.com] devotes a few pages in chapter 13 to Arp 299 and even calls it a "Supernova Factory." Interesting...
    • Bill Bryson's new book "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

      Is that, perchance, your own referral number in the URL?

      I found a shorter on of http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-fo rm/103-5576298-7316661 going there directly.

  • Pictures (Score:5, Informative)

    by henrygb ( 668225 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:24PM (#6071054)
    Other sites have pictures [astronomy.com] as well as not needing registration.
  • x...read Red/Blue Plaid as Red/Blue Pill?

    The Matrix definetly has me...
  • So that's then 32h times higher than usual. We geeks don't like decimal, right?

  • Spaceballs (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Obligatory quote:

    Barf: What the hell was that?
    Lone Starr: Spaceball 1.
    Barf: They've gone to plaid.

  • Bugs (Score:2, Funny)

    by Stalke ( 20083 )
    Sounds like a alpha galaxy (1 crash/bang every 2 years). Our galaxy (the milky way) sounds like beta galaxy (1 crash/bang every 100 years). Hopefully there's a stable galaxy out there somewhere :)

  • The Important Questions...narf (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:38PM (#6071157)
    The article fails to answer the important questions for us all.

    1. What is the yield of this process technology?
    2. Does this yield go up as the process matures?
    3. Does Moore's Law apply to supernova production?
    4. Can you get a refund/exchange on dud supernovas, or do they just provide firmware updates?
    5. Are supernovas legal for use in 4th of July celebrations in states that otherwise permit fireworks?
    6. Does the EPA regulate supernovas, or do they fall under BATF?
    7. Do you need a CCW permit to carry a concealed supernova?
    8. Are supernova futures traded on the NASDAQ yet?
    9. Have the Democrats figured out a way to tax supernovas (since they fall in the highest out-go bracket)?
    10. Have the Republicans managed to regulate what supernovas can do in the privacy of their own interstellar gas clouds?
    11. Can the RIAA/MPAA use the DMCA to sue supernovas suspected of being P2P traders?

    Yes, where are the real answers?

  • Why this is important... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pq ( 42856 ) <rfc2324&yahoo,com> on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:48PM (#6071239) Homepage
    So I'm seeing lots of funny stuff, but no serious comments. Okay, we knew about supernovae, and we knew that where there is star formation, sooner or later there will be star death and supernovae as well. No freaking big deal, right?

    The surprise here is the rate of supernovae going off in that tiny volume. One cluster, one million stars, and a supernova every two years. In our galaxy, we're still waiting for one since the days of Galileo and Tycho, probably an average rate of one every century or so. And this is with Billions and Billions (TM) of stars in our galaxy!

    So that is a pretty big surprise. And it is a VLBA result: very cool. (The standard analogy for the VLBA resolution is the ability to pick out Roosevelt's eye on a dime held up in LA while you are standing in New York...)

    • " So I'm seeing lots of funny stuff, but no serious comments."

      Go to your user settings->preferences->comments and set moderation for "FUNNY" comments to be -4. That's what I do and Slashdot will seriousen-up pretty quick. I surf /. at 4+ (unless I'm moderating, then it's -1, ick ) and this cut the number of comments by 1/3.

      Sometimes I miss the funny comments, but I'm just to busy and something had to go.

      Later
      =Shreak
  • I'm sure someone here will be happy to clear this up for me but...
    • Penetrating thick dust where two galaxies are colliding

    How do galaxies get to the point of collision? If the universe began with the big bang that would indicate material being thrown outwards from a source point in pretty much an even pattern. As they continue to go outwards the space between them would increase, not decrease. Now, I know the debate about "are we expanding forever or not" but can someone in a nut shell explain to me

    • Locally, the expansion of the universe can be countered by gravity. Just like the stars in our galaxy are held together by gravity, galaxies form clusters in which the velocities are not what you would expect from the expansion of the universe alone. Our Milky Way, for example, is on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy. The `collision' will happen in some hundreds of millions of years, IIRC. There will, however, be virtually no danger of colliding stars, although, judging from recent discoverie

    • Re:Unbelievably ignorant question... but... (Score:4, Informative)

      by stwrtpj ( 518864 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @06:23PM (#6071560) Journal
      How do galaxies get to the point of collision? If the universe began with the big bang that would indicate material being thrown outwards from a source point in pretty much an even pattern. As they continue to go outwards the space between them would increase, not decrease. Now, I know the debate about "are we expanding forever or not" but can someone in a nut shell explain to me what would cause a galaxy to alter trajectory so much as to collide with another - especially after this much time from the big bang? Thanks.

      The universe did not have a "source point" where all matter spewed from in the big bang. Instead, its space itself that expands and carries everything along with it in more or less an even pace.

      Use a balloon as an analogy. Take a balloon before blowing it up and use a felt-tip marker to put lots of dots on it. The dots represent galaxies and the balloon the fabric of space. Now blow up the balloon. All the dots recede from each other evenly, even though there is no source point. While you may think of the center of the balloon as a source point, it isn't really, because it exists outside the normal 2 dimensions of the surface of the balloon.

      Increase all the dimensions by 1 and you have the situation you do in the universe. Space itself is expanding. Thus since everything has not been thrown out from a source point, there is plenty of time for gravity to pull together galaxies over great distances. Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces but its effect stretches over the longest distance.

      Also, when galaxies collide, in most cases there is very little star-to-star collisions, since there is so much empty space between the individual stars. What happens is the interplay of gravity between the stars warps the overall structure of the galaxy, which can have the effect of either stripping it of starmaking material and thus lead to the slow death of the galaxy, or concentrating it and leading to bursts of stellar births (and deaths, if the generated stars are very high mass and burn throught their hydrogen quickly).

      Hope this helps a little.

  • No Tourists (Score:3, Funny)

    by Michael_Burton ( 608237 ) <michaelburton@brainrow.com> on Thursday May 29, 2003 @05:58PM (#6071322) Homepage

    Sounds pretty awesome.

    I was going to say, "Sounds like a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." Then I realized that the frequent huge doses of ionizing radiation would probably wreak havoc on television reception and other things. So maybe it's not even a nice place to visit. And I'm just sure I couldn't live there for very long.

  • zerg (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lord Omlette ( 124579 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @06:05PM (#6071385) Homepage
    Anyone remember that episode of Andromeda where some evil dictator acquires weapons of mass destruction that can take out entire stars? Maybe that's what's going on there, they're just testing & stuff...
  • Hmmmm...is it only me who finds it a bit suspicious that it's the New York Times that's reporting this?

    The old axiom "fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me" comes to mind.

  • conway's game of life? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    does this remind anyone of conway's game of life? eg, how first they discovered "persistent" creatures, like:

    ***
    *
    *

    and then later discovered factories that produced such creatures? of course, that leads into "what about factories that produce these 'supernova factories'? where do they get their materials from? ...perhaps from the cast-off remains of exploded supernovae? if so, have we discovered a stellar ecosystem? no doubt others have considered this...

    ruriruri
    www.redsails.org

  • NY Times Slashdot.com Universal Username/Password (Score:5, Informative)

    by ee_moss ( 635165 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @06:14PM (#6071483)
    NY Times access without having to register:

    Username: slashdot.com
    Password: slashdot.com

    Hopefully that will work for a whole mass of people logging in. Easy to remember. Take that, NYT >:) Pass it along.

  • Plaid? (Score:3, Informative)

    by David Leppik ( 158017 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @06:15PM (#6071491) Homepage
    A Supernova In Red/Blue Plaid, Please
    Did anyone else read this and immediately parse this as something out of Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky [amazon.com]?

    The book describes a species of aliens who see in many more colors than we do. One color, commonly found in sunsets, is translated into English as "plaid."

    If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend it. It's arguably the best book by one of the brightest authors out there. He's the only author where I can't find anything to quibble about concerning his computer science. [Sample Chapter] [tor.com]

  • Sounds pretty awesome

    Not if you happen to live there....

  • Other reasons Arp 299 is interesting. . . (Score:5, Interesting)

    by astrobabe ( 533099 ) on Thursday May 29, 2003 @06:26PM (#6071595) Homepage
    First off the space.com story alternated between calling the galaxy Arp 229 and Arp 299 which totally confused my astronomer self.

    BUT. . .Arp 299 is one of the galaxies calssified as a starburst galaxy, meaning we see lots of star formation going on in Arp 299. People saw how much star formation with ISO [vilspa.esa.es] and we'll be looking at it with SIRTF [caltech.edu] after we launch. It's thought that supernovae can trigger star formation by the shocks from the explosion disturbing the gas clouds and making them unstable. Of course the multiwavelength data is needed to test this theory and this radio data combined with the optical and infrared will be a good first start. . . .
  • Damn.. I was sure this article was going to tell where I can go for torrents now.

  • Factory of what?!? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BitHerder ( 180499 ) <crroot@nOsPam.worldnet.att.net> on Thursday May 29, 2003 @07:00PM (#6071863) Homepage
    I'm probably picking nits here, but doesn't it sound odd to speak of a "supernova factory"? It makes as much sense as a moldy bread factory or a worn tire factory. A supernova is the death of a star after a long life, it makes no sense to suggest that this cluster is stamping 'em out. Better to say that at one time this was a star factory, producing shiny new stars which are/were dying at relatively the same time.
  • Stars explode in Earth's home galaxy, the Milky Way, only once in a century.

    I thought that was common knowledge.
  • Galactic merging can be tied to an increase in the rate of supernova formation, not through actual mass accretion from stars between galaxies, as galaxies usually just past right through each other when they merge, but rather through gravitational interactions that somehow destabilize binary systems that would have previously not have resulted in a supernova.

    For instance, gravitational tides resulting from merging galaxies could change a distant circular orbit between two stars, one a white dwarf, the oth

  • APOD (Score:4, Informative)

    by msheppard ( 150231 ) on Friday May 30, 2003 @07:36AM (#6075197) Homepage Journal
    As usual, the Astronomy Picture Of the Day [nasa.gov] has a very nice picture and explination of this.

    And as a bonus, today's APOD [nasa.gov] is one of the kewlest sunset pictures I've ever seen.

    M@

  • Just to be anal because I feel like it today, a plaid [reconstruc...istory.com] is a sort of sash come toga wrapped around the upper body in traditional highland dress. It is a garment not a cloth pattern. The family of cloth patterns used by the highland clans is called tartan [50megs.com]. To quote this page [infokey.com]:

    Originally, the Scottish Tartan was a distinction of rank or position. It was not identified by weave but by the number of colours in the weave. If only one colour was used it depicted a servant, two, a farmer rank, three, an officer

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