Active Seti brings us news that astronomers have discovered the origin of an enormous antimatter cloud surrounding the galactic center. Data from the European Space Agency's "Integral" satellite indicated that the cloud's distribution is similar to that of a group of binary star systems containing black holes or neutron stars. From NASA's article:
"The cloud itself is roughly 10,000 light-years across, and generates the energy of about 10,000 Suns. The cloud shines brightly in gamma rays due to a reaction governed by Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2. Integral found that the cloud extends farther on the western side of the galactic center than it does on the eastern side. Integral found certain types of binary systems near the galactic center are also skewed to the west. Because the two "pictures" of antimatter and hard low-mass X-ray binaries line up strongly suggests the binaries are producing significant amounts of positrons."
"The cloud itself is roughly 10,000 light-years across, and generates the energy of about 10,000 Suns. The cloud shines brightly in gamma rays due to a reaction governed by Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2. Integral found that the cloud extends farther on the western side of the galactic center than it does on the eastern side. Integral found certain types of binary systems near the galactic center are also skewed to the west. Because the two "pictures" of antimatter and hard low-mass X-ray binaries line up strongly suggests the binaries are producing significant amounts of positrons."
The cloud of antimatter is big and hot. When matter and antimatter come together they produce lots of Gamma rays, and that is happening. There are certain types of neutron stars or black holes that are orbiting in pairs that appear in the same pattern as the cloud or antimatter (positrons) so astronomers think it is likely that the pairs are causing the cloud.
If I weren't heading off to work, I'd tell you the story of Dick (matter) and Jane (antimatter) whose sordid love affair resulted in their eventual meeting and annihilation of their corporeal forms, converting the sum of their body mass into pure energy. Alas, if I were to continue the tale I'd be late for work.
Captain Kirk would not want to fly into such a cloud, especially at high speed, as it would eat away at the Enterprise's hull producing lots of gamma ray radiation. Definitely worse than a magnetic storm.
Yeah, but that was an episode in the animated series, which I considered a poor substitute even when I was a kid and they had just cancelled the original series a few years back. Therefore, you can't expect any self-respecting Trekkie to be familiar with such trivia.
"We expected something unexpected, but we did not expect this," says Skinner.
I really don't have anything to say about it other than... "huhwhat?" If he said something like "we expected something unexpected, and that's what we got," that would be better. But it's 7am on Monday and that doesn't help in any case.
"We expected something unexpected, but we did not expect this," says Skinner.
I really don't have anything to say about it other than... "huhwhat?" If he said something like "we expected something unexpected, and that's what we got," that would be better.
I'm guessing they were expecting something unexpected but got the Spanish Inquisition instead. A fine astronomy tradition. Even Galileo didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
But it's 7am on Monday and that doesn't help in any case.
We expected something unexpected, but we did not expect this
They expected whatever expectorated the radiation was an unexpected source. Yet the expectation that they would find the source of exectoration to be quite so unexpected, that the excited scientists exclaimed that such an extraordinary event was quite unexpected. The exact reason for the non-uniform distribution is still unexplained.
Man you are NOT helping here! Especially with that extra "expect" type word you put in there. And then you also misspelled it later. And the second sentence is more like a sentence fragment. Clearly this article is hurting a lot of people's brains.
Man you are NOT helping here! Especially with that extra "expect" type word you put in there. And then you also misspelled it later. And the second sentence is more like a sentence fragment. Clearly this article is hurting a lot of people's brains.
I would eagerly extract and edit the erroneous item. Except the egregeous use of exacting diction to exemplify my etymological interests entails effort. Instead I end it entirely, ere I make an assonance of myself.
Perhaps the giant gas cloud not only has anti-matter but anti-brain particles as well. The more we look at it and talk about, the more we absorb and the less intelligent and easily confused we'll get. Eventually it will get so bad that....Oh, SHINY!!!
As reported by an international team in the January 10 issue of Nature
Today is 11th of January and it is still not on the website. Obviously, the author of the article knows in advance about this publication.
What pisses me off is that he wrote about that in the past tense. Ordinary folks like myself who wanted just to read the peer-reviewed article, not their popularizing crap, are mislead to go there.
Is it that difficult to write "to be published" instead of "published"?
Ordinary folks like myself who wanted just to read the peer-reviewed article, not their popularizing crap, are mislead to go there.
While I would also prefer the peer reviewed article, you're making the false assumption that we're ordinary folk. Most people want the popularizing crap, not the actual science.
I meant that characterization of me as ordinary folks was in the context of comparison to the author of the article at NASA website who was privileged to have access to. I admit that my "who wanted just to read the peer-reviewed article" has mislead you.
Actually, I think most people want to read popularized stuff that's well written and explained, by someone who actually understands science, but also knows how to popularize it. I certainly don't want popularized crap written by journalists who don't even understand what they are writing. But maybe that's just me.
No (it's way too far way) and yes. The existence of such a cloud can only be explained by the massive creation of antimatter (there is most likely also the same amount of regular matter produced but it is probably cast the other way by an electric or magnetic field) that eventualy cleaned a portion of space of all regular matter. Puting any kind of matter into that cloud will result in particule-corresponding antiparticlue reaction into very high energy photon (gamma radiation). If an hypothetical spaceship
If an hypothetical spaceship entered the [antimatter] cloud, I don't know if it will be changed into pure energy almost instantly or not (the violent reaction at the surface of the hull will probably push back the antimatter cloud, and you need the same mass of antimatter to totally disintegrate the introduced matter) but it will be like putting it into a fusion reactor so the crew would die very fast anyway.
Indeed. This issue is hush-hush, but antimatter is the only thing a General Products hull isn't pr
Thinking of it, there could be a working protection from antimatter: if the cloud is ionized, an containment magnetic field could keep those nasty particules away in the same way it keeps the superhot gas far from the hull of a fusion reactor. But if there are anti-neutron or anti-H2 in the gas, you're toast.
Probably not much at all would happen to an object traveling through the cloud. I couldn't find any information on how dense the cloud is thought to be, but any "cloud" in space is by its nature going to be extremely diffuse. A few particles impacting a normal matter object passing through is not going to do any noticeable damage and the extra gamma rays are likely a drop in the bucket compared to all the radiation encountered moving closer to the galactic center.
I would wonder if any normal matter object could get to that cloud. As you got closer there would be more and more really nasty radiation. That might be enough to "destroy" just about any object that you can imagine. Plus space is big, really big. You can not just fly into this cloud. As you get closer and closer the object would get hit by more and more antimatter. It would probably tend to erode over time as it flies into this cloud. But if an object was going fast enough I would say yes it would make a very
"...governed by Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2."
I think it's important for people to understand that scientific theories and laws don't "govern", they explain things. Einstein's theories don't direct or influence the universe, they're just an observation on how the universe appears to work.
I know correct grammar on the internet has become a huge point of controversy, but when referring to science there's too much public confusion about how things work. Using words like "govern" in relation to scientific theories is a step towards lending credence to Intelligent Design, like scientific laws are control mechanisms of some "Great Designer".
"The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming." --Freeman Dyson
"The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been finely adjusted to make possible the development of life."
Fascinating huh? Kinda makes the Microsoft, Linux, BSD, Apple, GPL2, GPL3 flamewars seem pretty insignificant. Not only in the figurative sense, but literally as well since that cloud is immense and very hot from all the matter/antimatter collision.
That there is antimatter in the wild isn't news per se; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission [wikipedia.org]. It's the amount, imo, that's interresting here. And the way it's being produced.
No, this anti-matter cannot form stars. According to the Nature paper, the anti-matter is purely positrons. No anti-protons, so it can't form anti-hydrogen.
The gist of the paper is: we see lots of gamma rays that correspond to electron-positron annihilations. This glow is not symmetric. It has more or less the same distribution as a class of exotic systems which are capable of producing a lot of energy. If some of that energy is converted into electron/positron pairs, and if the positrons can escape the system and reach the "safety" of interstellar space, they should form a cloud which is about the right shape to match this glow.
Why is that any more stupid than eastern and western hemispheres of a planet?
Both designations are arbitrary, but once agreed on they are useful for communicating, which is sort of what language is for. Just because _you_ don't often need to differentiate between far regions of the galaxy doesn't mean astronomers don't, and have arranged it so they can.
I myself prefer the cool/uncool division of our planet and/or galaxy. Its very simple. I just take an arbitrary imaginary line and divide the planet/galaxy along that line. The cool part is the one I'm on at the time. Simple.
Yeah, it sucks a bit for all those uncool people out there but its their own fault really. For a price of a plane ticket and a beer they can be on the cool side too. Get me a house/job/money/car/female-combo and I might consider making their neighborhood my permanent residence, and thus - c
If you consider that this cloud has a non uniform distribution, and it is radiating energy, then that would definately mean there are at least cool/warm sides to the galaxy.
It's entirely subjective, but the Galaxy does have eastern, western, northern, and southern "sides". You can't find them with a compass but when discussing the structure of the galaxy people have to be able to discern one part from another, and using words we already know makes sense.
Ummm Sci-Fi fans have been dealing with Alpha - Delta quadrants for a while......and I would bet whoever named them North/South/East/West was a Sci-Fi fan and would have understood those terms.
The point he was making was that calling "Alpha Quadrant" is just as aribtrary as calling it the "Wester portion of the Galaxy". Heck, it's just as arbitrary as calling it "Trish". Anything we use to describe will just a lable assigned to an agreed upon area, so why not use something we're already familiar with?
And my point was that those of us familiar w/ Sci-Fi are also familiar w/ Alpha Quadrant.....and Alpha Quadrant was already applied in the current context.....East/West is a new application of existing terms instead of an existing application of existing terms.
So what? Even though you are familiar with [Alpha/Beta/Delta/Gamma] Quadrant, all of the people in the world are familiar with east, west, north, and south, and all of us know where they are in relation to each other. Do you prefer an ambigious system familiar only to people reading bad bad science fiction, or one that is immediately useful and easy to understand for everyone?
Arguing that it's a "new application of existing terms" should definitely go in its favour. This is similar to use the word "progra
I don't know i it is done that way, but you could define the north and south sides of a galaxy (or any rotating object) by looking in which way it rotates around its axe.
Well, there is doublt, and common sense. I could shoot you in the head and tell the judge that your death is not related in any way and that he should let me go. Antimatter does not spontaneously form inside regular matter galaxies be magic, you need extremely high energy to produce matter-antimatter pairs and particular conditions to separate them before they recombine. The binary system with a black hole that shares the same geometry is simply almost infinitely more plausible source than the void beside.
By the same logic, fat men and televisions in close proximity are CREATING couches.
Aren't they, though? Fat man has TV, but can't properly use it. (No couch to sit on.) He says to the free market, "GIVE ME MY COUCH!" Free market says, "OTAY!" It makes a couch, and it is good.
Um... (Score:4, Funny)
In English, please?
Re:Um... (Score:5, Informative)
The cloud of antimatter is big and hot. When matter and antimatter come together they produce lots of Gamma rays, and that is happening. There are certain types of neutron stars or black holes that are orbiting in pairs that appear in the same pattern as the cloud or antimatter (positrons) so astronomers think it is likely that the pairs are causing the cloud.
Parent
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It's all explained near the bottom of TFA - "We expected something unexpected, but we did not expect this," says Skinner.
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In English, please?
"CLOUDS GO BOOM!"
Re:Um... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Shields! (Score:2)
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Quote hurts my brain! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Quote hurts my brain! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Re:Quote hurts my brain! (Score:4, Funny)
They expected whatever expectorated the radiation was an unexpected source. Yet the expectation that they would find the source of exectoration to be quite so unexpected, that the excited scientists exclaimed that such an extraordinary event was quite unexpected. The exact reason for the non-uniform distribution is still unexplained.
Parent
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Re:Quote hurts my brain! (Score:4, Funny)
I would eagerly extract and edit the erroneous item. Except the egregeous use of exacting diction to exemplify my etymological interests entails effort. Instead I end it entirely, ere I make an assonance of myself.
Parent
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Or if you want to have fun with the string theorists, it hurts your brane.
Journalists strike again (Score:4, Insightful)
Today is 11th of January and it is still not on the website. Obviously, the author of the article knows in advance about this publication.
What pisses me off is that he wrote about that in the past tense. Ordinary folks like myself who wanted just to read the peer-reviewed article, not their popularizing crap, are mislead to go there.
Is it that difficult to write "to be published" instead of "published"?
Rant off.
Re:Journalists strike again (Score:4, Informative)
While I would also prefer the peer reviewed article, you're making the false assumption that we're ordinary folk. Most people want the popularizing crap, not the actual science.
Parent
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Do those particles travel over here? (Score:2)
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That is where the observed x-rays are coming from; They are the result of matter-antimatter annihilation.
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The existence of such a cloud can only be explained by the massive creation of antimatter (there is most likely also the same amount of regular matter produced but it is probably cast the other way by an electric or magnetic field) that eventualy cleaned a portion of space of all regular matter. Puting any kind of matter into that cloud will result in particule-corresponding antiparticlue reaction into very high energy photon (gamma radiation). If an hypothetical spaceship
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Indeed. This issue is hush-hush, but antimatter is the only thing a General Products hull isn't pr
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Tell that to Beowulf Shaeffer [wikipedia.org].
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As you got closer there would be more and more really nasty radiation. That might be enough to "destroy" just about any object that you can imagine.
Plus space is big, really big. You can not just fly into this cloud. As you get closer and closer the object would get hit by more and more antimatter. It would probably tend to erode over time as it flies into this cloud.
But if an object was going fast enough I would say yes it would make a very
Small Contention (Score:5, Informative)
I think it's important for people to understand that scientific theories and laws don't "govern", they explain things. Einstein's theories don't direct or influence the universe, they're just an observation on how the universe appears to work.
I know correct grammar on the internet has become a huge point of controversy, but when referring to science there's too much public confusion about how things work. Using words like "govern" in relation to scientific theories is a step towards lending credence to Intelligent Design, like scientific laws are control mechanisms of some "Great Designer".
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--Freeman Dyson
"The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron
--Step
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Re:That's so cool! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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Re:That's so cool! (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:That's so cool! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:east/west??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Both designations are arbitrary, but once agreed on they are useful for
communicating, which is sort of what language is for. Just because _you_
don't often need to differentiate between far regions of the galaxy doesn't mean
astronomers don't, and have arranged it so they can.
Parent
cool/uncool (Score:2, Insightful)
Its very simple. I just take an arbitrary imaginary line and divide the planet/galaxy along that line.
The cool part is the one I'm on at the time. Simple.
Yeah, it sucks a bit for all those uncool people out there but its their own fault really.
For a price of a plane ticket and a beer they can be on the cool side too.
Get me a house/job/money/car/female-combo and I might consider making their neighborhood my permanent residence, and thus - c
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I hope I don't have to pack up and move.
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Layne
Re:cool/uncool (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, like your "anti-matter credits" are going to do anything to help.
Parent
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Layne
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Layne
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So what? Even though you are familiar with [Alpha/Beta/Delta/Gamma] Quadrant, all of the people in the world are familiar with east, west, north, and south, and all of us know where they are in relation to each other. Do you prefer an ambigious system familiar only to people reading bad bad science fiction, or one that is immediately useful and easy to understand for everyone?
Arguing that it's a "new application of existing terms" should definitely go in its favour. This is similar to use the word "progra
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Antimatter does not spontaneously form inside regular matter galaxies be magic, you need extremely high energy to produce matter-antimatter pairs and particular conditions to separate them before they recombine. The binary system with a black hole that shares the same geometry is simply almost infinitely more plausible source than the void beside.
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Aren't they, though? Fat man has TV, but can't properly use it. (No couch to sit on.) He says to the free market, "GIVE ME MY COUCH!" Free market says, "OTAY!" It makes a couch, and it is good.
Here endeth the lesson.