Most Extreme Gamma-Ray Blast Yet Detected

Matt_dk sends in a quote from a story at NASA: "The first gamma-ray burst to be seen in high-resolution from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is one for the record books. The blast had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever seen. ... Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions. Astronomers believe most occur when exotic massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. As a star's core collapses into a black hole, jets of material — powered by processes not yet fully understood — blast outward at nearly the speed of light. The jets bore all the way through the collapsing star and continue into space, where they interact with gas previously shed by the star and generate bright afterglows that fade with time. ...Fermi team members calculated that the blast exceeded the power of approximately 9,000 ordinary supernovae, if the energy was emitted equally in all directions."

Re:coloured dots!!!

[MichaelSmith]

What I wanted to see was a graph with time on the horizontal axis and energy on the vertical axis. That would give me a better feel of what the burst actually did.

Re:how do they know

[ergean]

This is why I come to /. once in a thousand comments there is one like this. Thank you!

Re:We have witnessed the death of several evolved

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the explosion was 12.2 billion light years away, and the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, the objects around it would have got a maximum 1.5 billion years to nurture.
Now, considering the fact that the universe was very violent at that time, there might not have been any possibility of any civilization at all.
Also considering the fact that after sun came into being, life (basic proto microbial) took almost 1.5 billion years, and from there almost 2.5 billion years to reach the current stage, the possibility of any civilization being extinguished by the burst does seem remote.

Re:We have witnessed the death of several evolved

[jschen]

Furthermore, the early universe was much less rich in elements other than hydrogen and helium. Anything we might recognize as an advanced life form almost certainly would require a few generations of star formation to go by first before there's enough heavier elements given off by all the supernovas out there (admittedly, a lot more back then) to give them a chance. That said, it's not out of the question that something evolved that quickly. Sure, it wasn't so fast on earth, but one data point hardly makes for a rule.

Re:question

[PPH]

Yes. And at these energy levels, make sure its shiny side out.

Re:Big Bang

[Doctor Morbius]

You're a moron. Take your crank science and go talk about it on the "electric universe" site.

Re:Big Bang

[geekboy642]

"quantized" red shift.
You don't even know enough to know you don't know what the hell you're talking about.