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Space

Huge Star Quake Rocks Milky Way 548

Posted by Zonk from the hold-on-sol! dept.
SJrX writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists have detected "the biggest explosion observed by humans within [the past 400 years]". The explosion luckily occured about 50,000 light years away form us, on the far side of the Milky Way, as the article goes on to say that had the explosion been within 10 light years of us, it "would possibly have triggered a mass extinction.""
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Huge Star Quake Rocks Milky Way More

Huge Star Quake Rocks Milky Way

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  • Equation constraints (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Friday February 18, 2005 @10:42PM (#11719895) Homepage Journal
    Of course the existence of magnetars will place constraints on estimations of life on other planets like the Drake equation, and it might be useful to map out these sources of potential periodic radiation bursts to limit/make more efficient radio/laser surveys of the sky.

    • What about the existance of Sinistars?
    • Given that the "constants" in the Drake equation are order-of-magnitude estimates and that explosions like this are very rare, I don't think it will be a real impovement.

    • No, it won't (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Einer2 ( 665985 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:50PM (#11720286)
      From what I know, magnetars radiate most of their energy on an extremely short timescale, of order tens of thousands of years or so. Considering how rare they are, the number of stars that are irradiated by SGR flares must be pretty small, and so any additional term in the Drake equation would be very, very close to unity.

      If anyone wants to cruise for mod points, you could do an order-of-magnitude estimate of the fraction of irradiated stars using the age and total volume of the Milky Way, the mean time between SGR flares of this magnitude (call it a decade to a century), and the radius of OMG-We're-All-Gonna-Die that was specified in the article.

      Of course, the supernova explosion that led to a magnetar's formation would would have already done quite a bit of damage to the surrounding area, so they aren't likely to have any meaningful impact on any planetary systems around them anyway.

    • Re:Equation constraints (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Fulcrum of Evil ( 560260 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:51PM (#11720289)

      Given our rather limited data on the matter, what makes you think the Drake equation is anything more than a structured guess?

      • Re:Equation constraints (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mbrother ( 739193 ) <mbrother.uwyo@edu> on Saturday February 19, 2005 @12:04AM (#11720365) Homepage
        Sure, the Drake equation is but a structured guess, but it is a handy way of organizing the important terms and quantifying each and how certain they are. I got to have dinner with Frank Drake a few years ago at Lick Observatory, which was pretty cool.

    • This is old news. (Score:5, Funny)

      by JPriest ( 547211 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @12:06AM (#11720374) Homepage
      This happened 50,000 years ago and it is just now being posted to Slashdot? :)
    • Total output - ten thousand trillion trillion trillion watts. Not sure of the duration, but let's say that it lasted a second.


      At an estimated cost of 3 cents per kilowatt/hour, that would put the total cost at $8.3 billion trillion trillion, which is more than the Galactic Lending Limit.

  • Gee... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gumpish ( 682245 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @10:43PM (#11719907) Journal
    The explosion luckily occured about 50,000 light years away form us, on the far side of the Milky Way, as the article goes on to say that had the explosion been within 10 light years of us, it "would possibly have triggered a mass extinction."

    Yeah... that would have been a real loss.

    (Yes folks, I'm just that bitter.)

  • Give Me The Stars (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @10:46PM (#11719929) Homepage Journal
    Let's say 50Kly is as far away as this starquake can be (obviously not). And they happen on a 10ly granularity. That's something like 1 in 50K^3/10, or 1.25E13 to 1 against it happening in 400 years. Staring down the barrels of nuclear and Greenhouse extinction in the next century, I'll take those odds.
    • Actually according to this article [space.com], the odds are pretty much zero of this happening to us....

      "There are no magnetars close enough to worry about, however, Gaensler and two other astronomers told SPACE.com."

      -S

    • Re:Give Me The Stars (Score:5, Funny)

      by pVoid ( 607584 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:03PM (#11720030)
      Jebus man...

      You should be a numerologist. You know, those people who ask you when you were born, and you answer "uuh... 4th of january, 1972", and they say "well, if you add 72 and 19, that makes 91 and you add 4 and 1, that makes five, and five plus 9 plus one gives you 96, modulus three, that's THREE!!!

      THE HOLY TRINITY!!!

      You are the chosen one, my son.

      **ding**

      Times up, that'll be $29.99 dear, my assistant will take your fee out front no cheques, only cash please. You can ask her for a receipt too. Thank you, come again!

  • Magnetars.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by salvorHardin ( 737162 )
    Apparently there's no Magnetars [wikipedia.org] anywhere near Earth, and I'm wondering, since this star was 'the other side of the galactic center', could such things possibly be closer to the center than we thought? Would this explain what we currently think is the gravity of a central black hole?
    Oh, and check out the New Scientist [newscientist.com] article.

    • could such things possibly be closer to the center than we thought? Would this explain what we currently think is the gravity of a central black hole?

      We are quite sure that 3.6 million solar masses are in an extremely compact region, so small that if it were multiple objects, they would very quickly collide and merge into one. Here's the observational evidence [mpe.mpg.de]. Note that some of the data is projected into the future.

  • Faintly heard by SETI (Score:5, Funny)

    by Boyceterous ( 596732 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @10:49PM (#11719950)
    just before the explosion:
    "Damn you, you bloody baboon!"
  • If the sun was only 10 kilometres from your house, a mass extinction might occur.

    Seriously, this has to be the most bizzare astronomy story tagline I've ever read. I figured this was the submitter's quote, or possibly the article writer - nope, it was from one of the physicists.

    • Re:Breaking news! (Score:3, Informative)

      by multiplexo ( 27356 )
      If the sun was only 10 kilometres from your house, a mass extinction might occur.

      Seriously, this has to be the most bizzare astronomy story tagline I've ever read. I figured this was the submitter's quote, or possibly the article writer - nope, it was from one of the physicists.

      Then you didn't read the New Scientist [newscientist.com] article which had this gem:

      But Christopher Thompson, an astrophysicist at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Physics, says that may not be so. The neutron star in question is rare m

      • Re:Breaking news! (Score:4, Informative)

        by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @12:14AM (#11720409)
        Ya know, IANAPOAPOA (I Am Not A Physicist Or AstroPhysicist or Astronomer) but I'm willing to bet that if I were 160,000 kilometers from this object, or even our sun, I might be worried about other things than my credit cards getting wiped.

        That's why YANAPOAPOA. I can imagine the interview.
        "If you were 160,000 kilometers from this black hole... we'll, you'd be in space, so you'd be dead! So don't go there!"

        Magnetic fields are difficult to characterize. What are you going to do, tell people the field is 1000000000000 Tesla? (Yawn, what's a Tesla?) You can't compare magnetic fields to hens eggs or Libraries of Congress. The only thing you can really do is compare them to a field strength that people are intuitively familiar with- like a refrigerator magnet's field, an MRI field, or a field sufficient to wipe magnetic cards. Refrigerator magnets and MRIs come in a variety of field strengths. Plus, smartasses would make comments about refrigerators and magnetic imaging machines in space.

    • Re:Breaking news! (Score:4, Informative)

      by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @12:49AM (#11720544)
      If the sun was only 10 kilometres from your house, a mass extinction might occur.
      Seriously, this has to be the most bizzare astronomy story tagline I've ever read. I figured this was the submitter's quote, or possibly the article writer - nope, it was from one of the physicists.

      Why is it bizarre? When I read it I understood what he meant and why he said it. Light years are big. For anything ten light years distant to have a measurable effect on the Earth is pretty amazing!

      The radiation intensity at the surface of the Sun is 63,000,000 watts per square meter. (Your 10 km makes no real difference.) The intensity 10 light years (10^17 m) away from a 10^40 watt source would be approx. 100,000 watts per square meter. So you'd have to be 25 solar radii away from the Sun for its radiation intensity to be equivalent to this magnetar if it were ten light years distant. (For comparison, mercury orbits at about 86 solar radii.) Nitpickers may note that the Sun is mostly radiating UV through IR, and the magnetar's energy is brief and in the gamma ray spectrum, but this is still impressive.

  • Science by Press Release (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Einer2 ( 665985 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @10:50PM (#11719954)
    Come on, give me a break. I've seen some of the science being done on this flare. There are enough cool things without being needlessly sensational, and invoking the Wipe-Out-All-Civilization radius definitely counts as sensational. After all, isn't the nearest magnetar something like 5 kiloparsecs away?
    • "After all, isn't the nearest magnetar something like 5 kiloparsecs away?"

      Pssh. The Millineum Falcon could reach that in no time!
    • well still, you gotta feel some pity for whatever lifeform died in that area. (hey, its POSSIBLE) ;)

    • Re:Science by Press Release (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @12:14AM (#11720408) Journal

      There are enough cool things without being needlessly sensational, and invoking the Wipe-Out-All-Civilization radius definitely counts as sensational.

      I couldn't agree more. There are only 10 stars [wisc.edu] within 10 light years of us -- one trinary, two doubles and three individual stars. None of them are anywhere near being potential supernovae. The BBC sensationalism was pointless and misleading.

      The actual quote from which that comment was derived was probably the one in the New Scientist article:

      That relatively small distance, coupled with an accurate energy measurement by NASA's RHESSI satellite, means the explosion was not as powerful - at source - as more distant bursts linked with black holes. Nevertheless, it "may have sterilised any planets within a few light years of it", says Rob Fender, an astronomer at Southampton University, UK, who is studying the lingering radio emission from the flare.

      Assuming this is correct, the BBC journalist seems to have taken an off-hand comment and put it into an unreleated and meaningless context.

  • More Informative (Score:5, Informative)

    by dev_sda ( 533180 ) <nathan AT unit03 DOT net> on Friday February 18, 2005 @10:52PM (#11719973) Homepage Journal
    I though that the New scientist article [newscientist.com] on it was a bit more informative.

    • Re:More Informative (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Scott7477 ( 785439 )
      Agreed...it quoted one researcher as saying that the distance to the magnetar could have been as low as 30,000 light years. And it said the magnetic field generated by this star could wipe a credit card that
      was 160,000 kilometers away.

  • Hooray Atmosphere... (Score:4, Funny)

    by helioquake ( 841463 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:04PM (#11720038) Journal
    Thanks goodness for Atmosphere. It has protected us once again!

    ps. It happened in August 1998. Back then it was SGR1900+14. Apparently a weaker event, but it knocked our socks off back then.

  • Disaster Area (Score:5, Funny)

    by randomiam ( 514027 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:05PM (#11720039) Homepage
    Did anyone else think that maybe we just saw the end of a Disaster Area Concert from the back row?

  • Trillion Trillion Trillion? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Man in Spandex ( 775950 ) <prsn@kev.gmail@com> on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:10PM (#11720069)
    From the article
    One calculation has the giant flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashing about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts.

    Very impressive but as reading those consecutive huge "units", I just had to:

    Dr Evil: I'll hold the world ransom for.....
    1 Hundread, Billion, Trillion TRiLLion TRILLION Dollars! *pinky*
  • It's hard to understand just exactly what happened from the BBC article, but could objects like these be responsible for some of the previously unexplained gamma ray bursts? Is this a new type of event?

    Just FYI, GRBs are extremely short (on the order of minutes) events that release huge amounts of gamma rays. There are many different types of these GRBs, some lasting longer than others, some related to quasars, but they are still quite a mystery.

  • Dang! Starting Fresh Would Be Fun! (Score:4, Funny)

    by zapadoo ( 807744 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:17PM (#11720118)

    had the explosion been within 10 light years of us, it "would possibly have triggered a mass extinction."

    Dang! Extinction has an upside -- it would be nice to start over and ditch the red-state, blue-state stuff and perhaps come out better for starting anew. Maybe the next batch of primordial ooze will grow up smarter than us, and perhaps along the way find something less verbose than XML in the process!

  • Don't panic... (Score:4, Funny)

    by catdevnull ( 531283 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:22PM (#11720137)
    ...I regret to inform you that in order to make room for the hyperspace express route...
  • "would possibly have triggered a mass extinction."
    But matter is energy and energy cannot be destroyed, only change its form
    • Perhaps you are confused on the definition of "extinction." They mean that the planet would be altered in such a way that species would die out completely. It's not about matter and energy. Maybe you're thinking of "anihilate?"

    • Re:I don't get it... (Score:2, Informative)

      by potpie ( 706881 )
      Ok I get it now... they mean "mass" as in "total" or "complete," not mass as a noun. Sorry for the double-post.
  • No wonder a big disturbance in the force was felt...

  • How's this news? (Score:3, Funny)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:46PM (#11720263) Homepage
    According to TFA this shit happened 50000 years ago. Is this some kind of slashdot record, posting news that mattered 50K years ago?

  • Who to blame? (Score:3, Funny)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @12:26AM (#11720462) Homepage
    as the article goes on to say that had the explosion been within 10 light years of us, it "would possibly have triggered a mass extinction."

    And it still would be George Bush's fault, right?

  • Mass extintion? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <spydermann.slash ... com minus distro> on Saturday February 19, 2005 @12:30AM (#11720482) Homepage Journal
    From the article:

    This is a once-in-a-lifetime event

    I bet the aliens who lived less than 10 light-years from there couldn't possibly deny what you just said.

  • Don't tell me that was any meteor shower! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Leebert ( 1694 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @12:56AM (#11720562)
    "It's Praxis, sir. It's a klingon moon."

  • Awesome writeup of the effects... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blincoln ( 592401 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @01:34AM (#11720670) Homepage Journal
    ...this would have on the Earth at close range [poe-news.com], courtesy a really smart guy who posted on POE News.

  • Bush and SETI (Score:3, Funny)

    by Punboy ( 737239 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @03:28AM (#11721082) Homepage
    George W. Bush is now working with SETI to negotiate the disarmament of SGR 1806-20's WME's (Weapons of Mass Extinction).

  • Raw reports of the burst (Score:5, Informative)

    by vrmlguy ( 120854 ) <samwyse@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Saturday February 19, 2005 @07:04AM (#11721547) Homepage Journal
    http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/other/180620041227.gcn3 [nasa.gov]

    This is a series of emails that discuss the burst. Interesting posts include the following:

    There were a series of small bursts observed before the big one, but no one seems to have realized that they were precursors until after the big one arrived. "During 21 December more than 30 SGR-like bursts were detected by Konus-Wind and Helicon-Coronas-F" satellites.

    The burst was detected by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. "A very preliminary analysis indicates that the arrival time at Odyssey is indeed consistent with an arrival direction from SGR1806-20."

    There is also discussion of an Earth-orbiting satellite that did not have a direct view of the flare; however, it picked up a faint echo 7.70 seconds after everyone else saw it. "This value corresponds exactly to burst travelling time from the Wind to the Moon and back to the Coronas-F."

    Finally, serendipious observations were made by spacecraft whose primary mission is solar observation. "The SGR was 5 degrees from RHESSI's pointing axis which was directed toward the Sun."

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