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Space Science

Hypernova Erupts as Global Telescopes Scramble 205

Posted by michael from the sun-never-rises dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The remarkable Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment [ROTSE] telescopes have tracked a 2 billion year old hypernova, from which an intense gamma ray burst reached earth on March 29. From Carl Akerlof, the ROTSE investigator: "The optical brightness of this gamma ray burst is about 100 times more intense than anything we've ever seen before." To underscore how the sun never rises on this automated telescope network, the observations switched rapidly from New South Wales in Australia back to Fort Davis, Texas, over a 12 hour burnout of the collapsing black hole."
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Hypernova Erupts as Global Telescopes Scramble More

Hypernova Erupts as Global Telescopes Scramble

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  • Which kind of raises the question, why not a meganova, or a giganova?

    jeez, silly names...

  • GAMMA BURST! Hitting us right now! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:33AM (#5677340)
    Hide in your basesment and get out your tinfoil hat! ...I'm glad to see many of you are already prepared.

  • Too bad.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tankdilla ( 652987 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:34AM (#5677342) Homepage Journal
    And it was just about to retire the next day. 2 billion years of loyal service as a hypernova, and it erupts just like that.
    Quoted a co-worker, "It's what we call in the nova business retirony."
    • And if a movie were made starring the hypernova, our plucky protagonist would invariably say to his younger, more nimbile supernova partner:

      "I'm getting too old for this shit."

  • The remarkable Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment [ROTSE] telescopes have tracked a 2 billion year old hypernova, from which an intense gamma ray burst reached earth on March 29.

    Wonderful...an intense gamma ray burst. I wonder how much this increases my chances of getting cancer...?
    • Probably a lot. However, it won't affect you for another 2 billion years so...

    • Re:Ack! (Score:3, Informative)

      by lemox ( 126382 )

      Wonderful...an intense gamma ray burst. I wonder how much this increases my chances of getting cancer...?

      Only if you do a lot of sunbathing outside the Earth'r atmosphere.

    • Not much, unless you decided to drink a couple of hundred beers from green bottles* upon reading this article.

      *the green color in glass comes from chromium.

    • Would it increase your changes of getting cancer? Shields that reduce gamma ray intensity by 50% include 1cm (0.4 inches) of lead, 6cm (2.4 inches) of concrete or 9cm (3.6 inches) of packed dirt. On the good side, gamma radiation is only as harmful as x-ray or beta particles. This NASA site [nasa.gov] however says that most gamma radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, which is why you need balloons or sattelites to really see gamma rays.
    • I don't care about cancer ... does this increase my chances of getting superpowers? Then I'd just have to find a tailor who can provide rip-proof purple pants ....
  • "Billlllyuns and billlllyuns of years ago..."

  • Old News. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Boss, Pointy Haired ( 537010 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:45AM (#5677375)
    This happened 2 Billion years ago.

    Slow news day?
    • It's a dupe, what more do you expect
    • Not only did it happen 2 billion years ago, SciFi Today wrote a story on it yesterday with lots of great links here [scifitoday.com]! Check it out!

    • Re:Old News. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ralphclark ( 11346 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @06:32AM (#5677844) Journal
      This might be old news but its certainly *big* news. It's just that the post is a little slow around here (i.e. 3x10^8 m/s).

      Being big news, it certainly raises some interesting questions:

      1). Given the enormous power output of this burst ("more than a million times the combined output of all the stars in the Milky Way" for at least a minute, then falling off) what effect would this have had on any organic life in that galaxy? More specifically, could anything bigger than a bacterium have survived?

      2). Are there any hypernova candidates in our own galaxy or the local Magellanic clouds?

      3). If there are, how much warning will we get before they go off?

      4). Assuming only technologies which don't contravene our current understanding of physics, how long would take us to retreat to a safe distance (the intergalactic void presumably)?

      One can only suspect that this might be one of those theoretical (until now) pan-galactic sterilizing "reset" events. Which might settle the debate over the Fermi paradox once and for all.
      • 5) When is Bush planning to invade this "far-away galaxy" to see if they're hiding other stars capable of this mass destruction?

        6) Are the aliens responsible for this? Good tactical plan: get all of Earth's telescopes to point in one direction, then come at us from the opposite.

      • The answer is 42, my friend =)

  • Can you get my back? (Score:4, Funny)

    by mcmonkey ( 96054 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:46AM (#5677381) Homepage
    "During the first minute after the explosion it emitted energy at a rate more than a million times the combined output of all the stars in the Milky Way. If you concentrated all the energy that the sun will put out over its entire 9 billion-year life into a tenth of a second, then you would have some idea of the brightness," said Michael Ashley, faculty member in the astrophysics and optics department at the University of New South Wales and a member of the ROTSE team.
    George Hamilton rated it an SPF 31 event.
    • George Hamilton rated it an SPF 31 event.

      Actually 9 billion years divided by 0.1 seconds works out to an SPF of 79,000,000,000,000.

      -

  • I'll Get The Ball Rolling (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:49AM (#5677390)
    From Carl Akerlof, the ROTSE investigator: "The optical brightness of this gamma ray burst is about 100 times more intense than anything we've ever seen before."

    And five minutes later, after someone accidentally spilled coffee on Dr. Akerlof, angering him, he was quoted as saying... wait for it... wait for it... all together now...

    HULK SMASH!!!

    Let the painfully immature gamma ray jokes begin.

  • Well... keep fingers crossed (Score:4, Funny)

    by KDan ( 90353 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:50AM (#5677396) Homepage
    Let's just hope we don't get one of these anywhere much closer than this, cause otherwise everyone will have a really good sun tan very fast!

    Daniel

    • Would something like this pretty much scour the "nearby" star systems clean of any life they might have supported? Kinda sucks to have a roll of the dice come up snakeyes and have a black hole collapse somewhere close enough to sterilize your planet.

      • Would something like this pretty much scour the "nearby" star systems clean of any life they might have supported?

        Yup, pretty much. Kind of like being inside the cosmic equivalent of a microwave oven for a few minutes or days. The Earth's atmosphere would probably filter most of it, but depending on how long it lasts it may either saturate or show bad side-effects, and it won't filter all of it - nothing filters gamma rays 100%, it's always only a percentage (unlike alpha or beta which can be blocked com

    • Re:Well... keep fingers crossed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Janitor ( 107737 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:39AM (#5677503)
      You mean like this one:
      Possible Hypernova Could Affect Earth [space.com]
    • Well... when you ever wanted the answer to Fermi's Paradox ("if they existed, they'd be here") - this may well be it. More-or-less regular events like this, purging a sphere of maybe 5000 LY clean of any higher forms of life may explain why we never see any traces of other advanced lifeforms (no radio signals etc.), especially if we presume that there's no practical FTL drive even remotely possible. Maybe there is simply not enough time for any possible civilization to be noticed within our timeframe befo

      • Well... when you ever wanted the answer to Fermi's Paradox ("if they existed, they'd be here") - this may well be it. More-or-less regular events like this, purging a sphere of maybe 5000 LY clean of any higher forms of life may explain why we never see any traces of other advanced lifeforms

        Stars aren't all packed at the same density in our galaxy, or others. Where stars are less dense, these purging events would be less common, and Fermi's aliens would have a chance to continue existing. Of course,

    • Don't worry, do like Bert the Turtle - "Duck and Cover!" [enviroweb.org].
    • I''ll use my fingers for better purposes. GRBs are special events. GRBs caused by hypernovas would look like supernovas to 499 observers out of 500. The one (un)lucky observer would be in the path of one of the two thin jets emitted by the hypernova. These are jets of material traveling at relativistic speeds. When the material decelerates and releases EM radiation, it is all emitted in the direction of the jet (the relativistic headlight effect). Unless the jet is pointed straight at you, it is almo

  • Before it gets slashdotted.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:05AM (#5677432)
    ** KARMA WHORE MODE: OFF **

    Hypernova Blast:
    Global Chase Ensues
    based on U. Michigan release

    Two billion years ago, in a far-away galaxy, a giant star exploded, releasing almost unbelievable amounts of energy as it collapsed to a black hole. The light from that explosion finally reached Earth at 6:37 a.m. EST on March 29, igniting a frenzy of activity among astronomers worldwide. This phenomenon has been called a hypernova, playing on the name of the supernova events that mark the violent end of massive stars.

    With two telescopes separated by about 110 degrees longitude, the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) will have one of the most continuous records of this explosion.


    The changing intensity of a gamma-ray burst. On the left is an image of the gamma ray sky showing the burst becoming the brightest object. On the right is a plot of the changing brightness with time. The first gamma-ray burst was seen in the year 1967 (although it was not reported to the world until 1973) by satellite-borne detectors intended to look for violations of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Credit: BATSE

    "The optical brightness of this gamma ray burst is about 100 times more intense than anything we've ever seen before. It's also much closer to us than all other observed bursts so we can study it in considerably more detail," said Carl W. Akerlof, an astrophysicist in the Physics Department at the University of Michigan.

    Contrary to visible light, gamma rays are non-thermal meaning that they are not produced in hot celestial bodies like the sun. Gamma rays occur in exceptional circumstances such as in the aftermath of a stellar explosion, in the vicinity of black holes, or at the core of active galaxies.

    Just recently, the ROTSE group commissioned two optical telescopes in Australia and Texas and were waiting for the first opportunities to use the new equipment. The burst was promptly detected by NASA's Earth orbiting High-Energy Transient Explorer (HETE-2) but human intervention was required to find the exact location.

    Despite sporadic clouds and rainstorms in Australia, the ROTSE instrument at Siding Spring Observatory in northern New South Wales was able to record the decaying light from the blast. Twelve hours later, the second ROTSE telescope in Fort Davis, Texas was picking up the job of monitoring this spectacular explosion.

    "During the first minute after the explosion it emitted energy at a rate more than a million times the combined output of all the stars in the Milky Way. If you concentrated all the energy that the sun will put out over its entire 9 billion-year life into a tenth of a second, then you would have some idea of the brightness," said Michael Ashley, faculty member in the astrophysics and optics department at the University of New South Wales and a member of the ROTSE team.

    Given that the history of astronomy goes back centuries, observations in the gamma spectrum are really among the newest areas in celestial research. The high-energy light is swallowed by the earth's atmosphere yet the light cannot be captured with conventional lenses or mirrors. Special detectors in satellites and high altitude research rockets register gamma rays with energies of up to around ten billion electron volts.


    Gamma rays occur in exceptional circumstances such as in the aftermath of a stellar explosion, in the vicinity of black holes, or at the core of active galaxies. Credit: NASA

    Fortunately for life on earth, a gamma particle from the universe does not penetrate to the earth's surface, but if it flies past an atomic nucleus within the earth's atmosphere, the gamma particle can transform itself into an electron and its (positive) antiparticle, a positron. During its journey through the air, this pair comes across more atomic nuclei and a gamma quantum is generated which then once again hits atomic nuclei. Thus, a single cosmic gamma particle creates roughly a thousand secondar

    • Choice of names... (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheMidget ( 512188 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:58AM (#5677544)
      With two telescopes separated by about 110 degrees longitude, the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) will have one of the most continuous records of this explosion.

      Fortunately, they didn't call their telescope network the Global Optical Automatic Transient Search Experiment, whose headquarter are in the Christmas Islands.

  • blindsided (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MoFoYa ( 644563 ) <mofoya@gmail.com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:11AM (#5677445)
    "To underscore how the sun never rises on this automated telescope network, the observations switched rapidly from New South Wales in Australia back to Fort Davis, Texas..."

    yeah, but if it were september would we even know it happened?
    IANAA but, it seems that even if you always have someone looking into the night sky, it's only half of the sky - you cant see the side where the sun is untill later in the year.

    now if we could somehow drop a satellite telescope behind in orbit around the sun about 6 months behind us and another 3 months behind (for line of sight comms) we could get a more complete picture of our neiborhood year round.

    or...i could be completly ignorant.

    • Re:blindsided (Score:5, Informative)

      by panurge ( 573432 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:50AM (#5677528)
      You are basically right, but you have to place them at the Lagrange points, otherwise they wander off.

      However, it's much easier just to put the telescope in orbit around the earth. Without atmospheric scattering, the telescope can be aimed close to the sun. That's one of the advantages of Hubble over any terrestrial telescope.

      • huh? (Score:2)

        by sstory ( 538486 )
        If you put them at the Lagrange points, some of them will shoot off rapidly. They're not all stable, you know.
    • If the telescope is in space the Sun closes only several degrees of the viewing angle. While definitely annoying this is not anywhere close to critical. So unless there will be some other pressing need, this is way off. Also the telescope should be put into one of the main Sun/Earth Lagrange points (L1 or L2), not arbitrary 3/6 months before/behind us.
    • "now if we could somehow drop a satellite telescope behind in orbit around the sun about 6 months behind us..."

      From what I understand, there's already a spaceship in that precise location.

  • In the make you wonder department. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:13AM (#5677455)
    The first of the four images from hubble of the event is about 2 light years across I figure the last of the 4 images they say is 6 light years across.

    Problem is this only happened in March so how did it expand 4 light years in like a few months and how exactly did that expansion happen when some how the burst just reached us over that distance.

    Anyone see a problem here? It expands 4 light years in size in just a few months yet some how the light manages to travel 2 billion light years.

    I can't see how this could have happened, Iv'e been thinking about it since it was posted as APOD picture of the day a few days ago.

    Expansion faster then the speed of light? It don't make sence to me.
    • Okay. So me an the AC could be complete and total idiots here, but it seems to me like he's making some sense.
      I'm sure that there is some sort of perfectly rational physilogical or astronomical explanation for this, but... could someone atleast share so we know?
      How did this expansion occur seemingly faster than light?
      • perhaps the same explanation as what happens when you wave a laser pointer across the moon (assuming you have powerful enough to see at that distance).

        You need to remember that nothing is breaking the speed of light barrier here because we're talking about different parts of the explosion: because the explosion is taking place so far away distances get amplified - simple trig. It's all in the angles. Think about cones.

        Of course I might not know what I'm talking about either, or am answering a question d

        • Re:In the make you wonder department. (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          For all that are wondering. I did some more reading and the nebula that's been illuminated is now 7 light years across (diameter) as of December 17th 2002.
          Now they're saying the nebula has always been there and it just being illuminated so the nebula is not traveling faster then the speed of the light...

          Ya ok fair enough but the light has traveled 3.5 light years from the center in only a single year.

          Now it don't make sence to me so I asked them to explain it to me and if I get a reply I'll post it here.
          • For all that are wondering. I did some more reading and the nebula that's been illuminated is now 7 light years across (diameter) as of December 17th 2002. Now they're saying the nebula has always been there and it just being illuminated so the nebula is not traveling faster then the speed of the light...

            Ya ok fair enough but the light has traveled 3.5 light years from the center in only a single year.

            You are making the mistaken assumption that the hypernova is at the center of the nebula when, in fact,

      • Re:In the make you wonder department. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Mac Degger ( 576336 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:09AM (#5677570) Journal
        Well, they explain it in another part of the site: it's something called the superliminal effect. Find the description here:

        http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/light_echo _0 30326.html#update

        and the pretty picture to accompany it here:

        http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay /i mg_display.php?pic=light_echo_graphic_030326_02,0. jpg
    • You guys are confusing a star lighting up its nebula in our own galaxy with a hypernova in a distant galaxy. I'd mod you off-topic.
    • In that picture sequence what you are seeing is not an explosion of material from the burster but light from it being reflected by interstellar clouds. These clouds are a bit closer to us than the burster. The pathway from the burster to the outermost clouds in the last picture of the series is 8 light-months longer than the pathway to the clouds in the first picture.

      A simplified model:
      Imagine a light and you are 2 light-seconds apart with a thin translucent screen halfway between you and the bulb, this sc

  • That's Pretty Big (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TeachingMachines ( 519187 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:54AM (#5677534) Homepage Journal
    "If you concentrated all the energy that the sun will put out over its entire 9 billion-year life into a tenth of a second, then you would have some idea of the brightness."
    The key phrase here is then you would have some idea. Frankly, there is a point in astronomy and astrophysics where things get so big, and so fast, and so bright, that the only idea that remains in one's brain when trying to imagine such phenomena is a white light with a big hand reaching into it. The example above is classic: first I have to imagine 9 billion years (good luck, I can't even remember what happened yesterday) and then I have to imagine a tenth of a second, which is like a total brain fart. And then, and only then, would I have some idea of the brightness. Well, I guess that I would have some idea if my head hadn't imploded while trying to imagine that nanofart called a "tenth of a second." Geezus.

    • Co-incidentally.. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @07:03AM (#5677928) Journal

      There are absolutely massive numbers involved that it's difficult to realistically comprehend them let alone compare them meaningfully.

      Co-incidentally, I worked out for someone tonight that if the Sun and the Earth were 5 centimetres apart (that's a couple of inches), then the Andromeda galaxy would be roughly 6.7 million kilometres down the road. (About 4 million miles.) And Andromeda's one of the closest of what was most recently estimated to be around 80 billion galaxies.

    • Well, maybe you can't imagine a tenth of a second but I can. It's actually pretty easy; grab yourself a stopwatch with at least a tenth of a second resolution and watch the tenths of a second tick by. They're fast but comprehendable.

      Their neighbor, the hundreths of a second, are below our visual actuity (not to mention the cheap LCD's refresh rate), and appear as nothing but a blur, even if you have something you can see them reliably on. That's harder to comprehend correctly, although there are still real
      • I have a copy of a really cool book, by Canadian Science journalist, called "Thesizesaurus". It is intended to be a kind of thesaurus for sizes. It talks about the compromises one needs to make to bring quantities from science into a everyday context ordinary readers can understand.

        25 or 30 years ago, when Pulsars were a relatively new phenomenon, I attended a presentation at the old McLaughlin Planetarium, where the presenter gave a very memorable presentation. He was explaining how the Crab Nebula co

  • A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... (Score:5, Funny)

    by irw ( 204684 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:05AM (#5677562)
    "Two billion years ago, in a far-away galaxy, a giant star exploded."

    The death of star. Death Star.

    I predict they might be seeing a second one of these explosions any time soon...

  • ROTSE (Score:1, Funny)

    by TheOnlyCoolTim ( 264997 )
    Is the quoted speaker the Rotse man? Rotse.cx?

    Tim
  • I've been staring at this thing for three days now. It's in a filed crowed with galaxies of every shape.

    I wrote about it in my /. blog a few days ago.
  • So they used the new ROTSE telescope. Has anyone heard of the GOATSE telescope? Yeah it's exclusively used for peering into massive black holes.
  • Is it an erupting hypernova?
    or
    Is it aliens shooting at us?

    "gamma ray burst is about 100 times more intense than anything we've ever seen before", Yep aliens for sure.

  • Gamma rays (Score:4, Informative)

    by jandersen ( 462034 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:11AM (#5677688)
    'Contrary to visible light, gamma rays are non-thermal meaning that they are not produced in hot celestial bodies like the sun. Gamma rays occur in exceptional circumstances such as in the aftermath of a stellar explosion, in the vicinity of black holes, or at the core of active galaxies'

    This is of course not true - gamma rays are produced in many places, among other things by Radium, if my memory serves me. And the Sun does indeed produce gamma rays are essentially just high energy photons, just like visible light (and radio waves, for that matter) with 'high energy'. Electromagnetic radiation is quantified in 'packets' called photons, and it is mostly a metter of taste whether you call them radio waves, microwaves, light, X-rays or gamma rays. There's an upper for gamma photons by the way (sort of): a photon with very high energy will tend to 'split' and form a pair consisting of an electron and a positron, which then annihilate in a burst of photons.

  • optical gamma rays? (Score:4, Redundant)

    by X_Bones ( 93097 ) <danorz13NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @06:36AM (#5677851) Homepage Journal
    "The optical brightness of this gamma ray burst is about 100 times more intense than anything we've ever seen before."

    Aren't gamma rays by definition not optical (i.e. not in the visible spectrum)?
  • I suggest we remove that galaxy from our list of places to go to when we have FTL - I doubt there is much life left after an event like this happens in your galaxy.

    Even give 2 billion years to recover, I'll bet that galaxy is just a bit thin on life.
  • Quoth the article:
    Fortunately for life on earth, a gamma particle from the universe does not penetrate to the earth's surface, but if it flies past an atomic nucleus within the earth's atmosphere, the gamma particle can transform itself into an electron and its (positive) antiparticle, a positron.

    Now, im in an entry level college physics course right now, and we're doing electromagentic stuff, and we jsut learned that gamma radiation is just that--ionising radiation. EM wave, no particle. What's the ar

  • 2001 reference (Score:5, Funny)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @08:22AM (#5678283)
    Owing to turning left at the monolith instead of right, Bowman gets goatse instead of rotse. His last recorded words are "My God, it's full of s**t!"

    Time to unload some karma

  • ...SETI@home reports that they've finally gotten an intelligible signal from that area of the sky. The message came in just before the nova.

    After decoding, it said, "Hey, Zborno, what's this button do?"
  • Perhaps this is some alien species' way of saying "Hey! We're over here!!!". Generating a great big blast of light without destroying the entire galaxy. What a great (and far advanced) idea!

    Now let's hope they aren't sending us a message in Morse code. Hehe..

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