X-Ray Burst Temporarily Blinds NASA Satellite 117
RedEaredSlider writes with news that a recently-detected gamma-ray burst, originating roughly five billion light-years away, was powerful enough to temporarily blind NASA's Swift satellite. Phil Plait has an interesting writeup on the event. Quoting:
"Swift, normally easily able to handle the X-ray load from these explosions, was overwhelmed, and actually shut down temporarily when software detected that the cameras onboard might get damaged by the flood of light. That’s never happened before. The burst was so bright in X-rays it put other GRBs to shame: slamming Swift with 143,000 X-ray photons per second, it was 5 times brighter than the previous record holder, and nearly 200 times as bright as a typical GRB! Weirdly, it didn’t look out of the ordinary in visible light."
Superman Also Affected (Score:2, Funny)
Impressive... (Score:5, Funny)
...for this LHC to achieve such respectable levels of efficiency.
She Blinded Me With Science (Score:2, Funny)
At least they... (Score:5, Funny)
Only fired off one Halo
To which the GRB source replied: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:RUN!! (Score:4, Funny)
or whatever scares most people at the current time.
Dick Cheney?
Meanwhile, in the intergalactic NOC (Score:5, Funny)
Some....where.....out there....at a glowing terminal in a galaxy far far away....
Pinging eth0.sol.andromeda.alphaquadrant.gxy [10.197.19.1] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.197.19.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=127
Request timed out
Reply from 10.197.19.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=127
Reply from 10.197.19.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=127
Ping statistics for 10.197.19.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
Re:Superman Also Affected (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Superman Also Affected (Score:1, Funny)
Or hard and stiff!
Re:RUN!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:To which the GRB source replied: (Score:5, Funny)
Christianity kicks it feet in the dirt for loosing the title.
Re:RUN!! (Score:5, Funny)
"That is not dead which can eternal lie"
Re:Impressive... (Score:3, Funny)
No, no, the aliens were just in for their routine medical and the X-Ray scanner went wonky. Nothing to get alarmed about. They were well within the permitted dosage limits, according to medical experts on Omnichron 425.
Search "Wormhole Sun LASCO" on Youtube. (Score:1, Funny)
You get this video [youtube.com] about actual observations of intercelestial bodies manipulating the sun with what are termed lasers, and then there are passes from what is deemed "wormhole" technology that arrives near the sun from a trailable distance that could be seen as perhaps millions of lightyears away because it can be visually traced.
Then of'course there is the meteor over 4-times larger than Planet Jupiter, and NASA doesn't report any of this.
Yay homebrew and independent astronomers!