Robotic Telescope Unravels Cosmic Blast Mystery 58
An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that scientists from Liverpool John Moores University have used their robotic telescope in the Canary Islands to measure the polarization of light from a Gamma Ray Burst just 203 seconds after its detection by NASA's Swift Gamma Ray Observatory Satellite. The result suggests that the emitting material flowing out from the explosion may not be highly magnetized in the way that some theories had predicted."
When Anomalous Becomes the Norm (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is the whole point of doing the research. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact the whole idea is to sometimes find out surprising things that find flaws in the old models and give information to drive the creation of more accurate models. (One definition of information transfer is how much the receiver is surprised. B-) )
That's what we're spending all this money for: To come up with physics that more closely matches the real universe. To do this we have to know what's NOT matching in the old models.
(For those - ideally few of the slashdot participants - who gripe that it's being spent at all: At some point the improved models will almost certainly produce some new and useful technologies and/or end squandering of resources on the pursuit of dead-ends. Of course you can't know up front WHAT technologies it will affect. That's part of what you're finding out.;)
Re:Big Bang? (Score:3, Insightful)