Echoes from Ancient Supernovae Found?

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are claiming that they may have found echoes left over from ancient supernovae. From the article: "Just as a sound echo can occur when sound waves bounce off a distant surface and reflect back toward the listener, a light echo can be seen when light waves traveling through space are reflected back toward the viewer. The light echoes were discovered by comparing images of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) taken years apart. By precisely subtracting the common elements in each image and analyzing what variable objects remain, the team looked for evidence of dark matter that might distort the light of stars in a transitory way, as part of a second-generation sky survey called SuperMACHO. SuperMACHO builds on the discoveries of the MACHO project, which started at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1989."

Echoes from Ancient Supernovae Found??

[Anonymous Coward]

Supernovae ? Call the RIAA immediately !

Re:Echoes from Ancient Supernovae Found??

[ceeam]

That should be MPAA, you stupid first-poster! ;)

Re:Echoes from Ancient Supernovae Found??

[TubeSteak]

We called the MPAA at first, but they couldn't stand up to the massive quantities of hard radiation put out by supernovae.

Unfortunately, the RIAA (being closely related to cockroaches) found themselves able to tolerate the radiation.

I hear their mutated spawn plan on getting into the TV business.

Re:Echoes from Ancient Supernovae Found??

[Ucklak]

"...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Nothing new

[FhnuZoag]

The summary is a bit misleading. Light echoes are by no means a recent discovery. APOD viewers like me have seen them since at least 1997.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap971023.html [nasa.gov]

Re:Nothing new

[doubletruncation]

This is actually a pretty exciting result that's different from the case of SN 1987A in that they're seeing light from ancient SN which were never observed originally. It's the idea of discovering ancient supernovae by light echoes that's new, not just seeing a light echo from a supernova. You can see their paper at http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0510738 [lanl.gov].

APoD has had better light echoes

[MillionthMonkey]

The significance of this particular story is that a thin, attenuated light echo was used to locate a supernova that is no longer visible. APOD has had far more spectacular light echoes but usually you can plainly see the primary source of the echo at the center since they are only a few years old. In this case the echoes they found were hundreds of years old- thin expanding rings of reflected light hundreds of light years in diameter- with centers that were completely dark. The echoes were only found serend

Re:APoD has had better light echoes

[Markus Registrada]

1. The reason for the flash remains unexplained by theory, and the star has been posing problems for theorists ever since. Stars that make problems for theorists are always interesting.

...except when they're not.

It appears that the distinction lies in whether the theorists think the star (a) appears to exemplify (some minor variation of) a widely popular but ill-supported theory, or (b) entirely contradicts a widely popular but ill-supported theory. It's easy to guess which one generates interest among

Re:APoD has had better light echoes

[Xeriar]

An example of a star (or something) that causes problems for theorists, but is canonically uninteresting, is the high-z quasar (supposedly among the most distant and, perforce, luminous objects in the universe) physically in front of the nearby opaque galaxy NGC 7319. The silence since it was reported has been deafening

It's been noticed, but it is rather weak.

It could be a really damn bright quasar, or it could be from a collision that sent a black hole careening away at extreme velocities. Either way, mor

Re:APoD has had better light echoes

[some guy I know]

The reason for the flash remains unexplained by theory

Two words: Dyson Sphere.
That's the reason that the star's temperature appears to be so low now, because what is actually being seen is waste heat emitted from the surface of the Dyson Sphere surrounding the star, and not anything from the star itself.
The flash had something to do with the intial construction of the sphere, but I don't know what that is, because I'm not familiar enough with technology that advanced.

Definitely a Dyson Sphere, though.
Defi

Re:Nothing new

[Megahurts]

>Light echoes are by no means a recent discovery. APOD viewers
>like me have seen them since at least 1997.

I've see them pretty much every morning since the early 80's when I started combing my own hair.

Its not a dupe!

[vivek7006]

Without RTFA, I assumed that it is a dupe of http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/20/043218 &tid=95&tid=99 [slashdot.org]

"SuperMACHO"

[CosmeticLobotamy]

It should be illegal to name your own project, especially with acronyms. Everything should be called "the thing we're doing" until someone unrelated comes along and names it. It would save so many horrible fake acronyms.

Re:"SuperMACHO"

[AndroidCat]

They probably didn't create the MACHO acronym [wikipedia.org] (MAssive Compact Halo Object) since it's been around for a while. A competing theory is WIMP [wikipedia.org] (weakly interacting massive particles).

Wheeee!

Re:"SuperMACHO"

[FhnuZoag]

But SuperMACHO is an awesome project name! You just need to know a bit of the background here.

There are two main theories for Dark Matter (which, lest we forget, stands for missing mass that we can't seem to detect):

1. WIMPs - Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. Stuff like neutrinos that interact only though gravity/weak nuclear. They are dark because they are so tiny and ghostly.
2. MACHOs - MAssive Compact Halo Objects. Stuff like black holes, neutrons stars. Things so big and massive that they bend light around them and make themselves invisible, and of course emit no light themselves.

Isn't it so neat that we have two natural acronyms here that stand in juxaposition to each other? Naturally, we call a project to find MACHOs, Project MACHO, and a project to supersede that Project SuperMACHO.

See... Not horrible and fake at all.

Re:"SuperMACHO"

[CosmeticLobotamy]

MAssive Compact Halo Objects ... Isn't it so neat that we have two natural acronyms here

A natural acronym would be MCHO (pronounced "mikko", or "macho" if you absolutely must), and MCHO would then be replaced by MCHO2.

But I guess if they were going for the joke the first time around, it's not so bad.

Re:"SuperMACHO"

[Jedi Alec]

no matter what, both MACHO and WIMP are merely forms of Greatly Exagerrated Extra-terristrial Kaos.

Maybe you speak gaelic,

[Inoshiro]

but in my language, we use vowels!

Re:"SuperMACHO"

[tnsimonson]

Prior to being dubbed MACHO, the working title of this project was Compact Objects Juxtaposed Over Neglible Echo Systems, or COJONES. It was felt that this unfortunate acronym would be offensive to some, so the name was changed to Partially Uncovered Transient Anomalies Masked Against Dense Retrograde Echoes, or PUTA MADRE. Tragically, this acronym also caused anger in many circles, and thus was born MACHO.

Geeks

[Craig Ringer]

This rule needs to go double for geeks. If the geek in question, or organization, has any history of committing the crime known as "the creation of a recursive acronym after 1985," the penalities for violation must be swift and extreme.

Re:"SuperMACHO"

[Dachannien]

They were probably big Randy Savage [wikipedia.org] fans, and wanted MACHO as a backronym.

OH YEAH!!

Re:Bonus Points!

[Bros]

"Super Novae" is the plural of "Super Nova".

Re:Bonus Points!

[Khuffie]

Hmm. I also thought it was weird, but according to google, both are correct.

http://www.google.com/search?q=define:Supernovae [google.com]
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:Supernova

Re:Bonus Points!

[Khuffie]

Nevermind. Seems like Super Novae is the plural ;)

Re:Bonus Points!

[giorgiofr]

People should just stop trying to use latin plurals. First, they usually get them wrong (virii with two i's etc); second, once a foreign word becomes part of your language, you stop using its native plural, genitive if any, various cases etc.
You don't go around saying you see a supernovam or the light of a supernovae, so why do you insist in saying there are two supernova (or novae if you get it wrong)? Either use always the same form of the word, or use English plural formation rules.

Re:Bonus Points!

[whig]

Latin plurals get messed up a lot, but supernovae is the correct plural of (singular) supernova.

Re:Bonus Points!

[giorgiofr]

I don't agree: supernovum astrum -> supernova astra.

Re:Bonus Points!

[giorgiofr]

Self-reply: of course this invalidates the above examples (supernovam, etc.) and just goes to show how messy it becomes unless you set a standard.

Re:Bonus Points!

[blincoln]

Insects have antennae. Spiders have chelicerae. I don't see what the problem is.

Re:Bonus Points!

[hoshino]

On a seperate note, two i's or not, the plural of "virus" is "viruses" and nothing else.

Re:Bonus Points!

[torako]

One nova, many novae....

Fascinating

[Cally]

Well, this sounds really fascinating. I'm afraid I don't have much to add to that, so - on a slightly-related tangent - (the Magellanic Clouds) - the Opportunity Mars rover recently took pictures of the Martian sky at night [unmannedspaceflight.com] that shows the Magellanic clouds. Check out the amateur image processing at Unmanned Spaceflight. There have been some amazing pics from the rovers, but this one stands out for me for emotional impact. (Mind you, I'm a sucker for schmaltz and sentiment... Boing Boing linked to a public domain radio version of "It's a Wonderful Life" the other day, I had to keep pausing it stop from bawling like a 5 year old :)

What do you bet...

[FlyByPC]

...that if they were designing one to observe Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles [wikipedia.org], that they wouldn't name it SuperWIMP?

Wormhole?

[QuantumInterference]

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line... Would someone explain to me how light reflected by a 160,000 light year distant gas cloud reached Earth in less than 600 years?

Slightly misspoken

[localroger]

What I'm sure the author meant to say is that the light from the original supernova explosion would have arrived here 600 years ago.

Look for Nova from Christ's birth?

[ZoomieDood]

Well, the subject kinda says it all.

Which way is east again?

Wait a minute..

[Alpha_Traveller]

::::Wipewipewipewipe::::

Sorry, I sneezed on the receiver, take the picture of the galaxy again and tell me what you see in comparison....