Furthest Gamma-Ray Burst Ever Observed

jd writes "The SWIFT team have announced the furthest-ever observed super-massive gamma-ray burst (from 13 billion light years away). The burst was observed on the 6th of September and lasted for 3 minutes - long enough for a number of other telescopes to home in on the gigantic explosion. The distance is only barely within the reaches of the observable universe. The idea of the SWIFT telescope and follow-up observations is that they will discover both the cause of the bursts and the consequences to the star."

Re:Wouldn't it be interesting..

[Tablizer]

If the distant explosions are caused by aliens

Since they seem to go back to the time that the universe was only 1 billion years old, that is fairly unlikely. Stars back then were too immature to produce enough complex elements thought needed by life. It takes several birth-death cycles for stars to produce non-simple elements, such as carbon.

Further, even if they did arise that early, having the Cosmic Nuke back then would almost certainly have resulted in more noticable changes. One could argue that they blew themselves up, but gamma bursts seem fairly uniform over time and space. Weapons technology growth and use tends not to be uniform, based on earth history.

Finally, they don't seem clustered (repeating in same vacinity). Most wars produce clusters of weapon usage, near the front lines. These so far seem random.
         

Re:Wouldn't it be interesting..

[saskboy]

You're probably right about not being enough complex elements, unless we're wrong about how matter is organized, or pops into our universe.

"Most wars produce clusters of weapon usage, near the front lines. These so far seem random."
Unless the physics of the universe only permit solar destruction in a particular way, and so each advanced species always will eventually come to the same conclusion, and possibly same end. Or the star destroying alien race(s) have almost always existed, and can travel vast distances instantly, and it just takes them a few thousand years here and there to get mad enough or bored enough that they want to smoke a few stars.

But this is of course just my imagination running wild. It's entirely more likely that nature itself is just acting out, much like lightning storms on earth: Flashy, loud, and scary.

Re:light instead of gamma

[scapermoya]

i forgot, in OUR night sky, within the visable light spectrum, the moon is surely the brightest object, followed by venus, some other planets, and then i believe sirius. I supposed a realtively close and bright supernova could outshine all the other stars, and maybe even all the planets, but it would have a tough time competing with luna.