Physicists Spot Potential Source of 'Oh-My-God' Particles 144
sciencehabit (1205606) writes For decades, physicists have sought the sources of the most energetic subatomic particles in the universe — cosmic rays that strike the atmosphere with as much energy as well-thrown baseballs. Now, a team working with the Telescope Array, a collection of 507 particle detectors covering 700 square kilometers of desert in Utah, has observed a broad 'hotspot' in the sky in which such cosmic rays seem to originate. Although not definitive, the observation suggests the cosmic rays emanate from a distinct source near our galaxy and not from sources spread all over the universe.
Ooh, ooh, I have a bogus theory (Score:3)
I have an idea backed only by my imagination.
What if those galaxies are proof of symetry, and they're some of the few that are made of both matter and anti-matter, and the high energy ejections we're seeing are from that collision. Maybe half the galaxies in the sky are made of anti-matter and the non-particle-scale properties of antimatter are otherwise identical to matter.
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Just whatever you do, do not cross that streams. that would be bad.
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I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
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ERMERGERD! It's FULL of STARZ!
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It's the Goa'uld, trying to destroy earth by slowly warming it up so we all cook to death.
Re:Ooh, ooh, I have a bogus theory (Score:5, Informative)
Collisions between matter and antimatter in space produce a lot of gamma rays of specific energies corresponding to the energy equivalence of the mass of the particles involved (not exclusively at those energies, but a lot there still). This has allowed scientists to characterize collisions between gas clouds and antimatter in areas around our galaxy, but they involve very, very small amounts of antimatter spread out over a large volume.
As far as the discovery that these high energy particles might be coming from some place close, this was somewhat expected as the GZK limit [wikipedia.org] describes a process of high energy particles interacting with CMB photons to pair produce and lose energy, limiting the energy of high energy cosmic rays that travel a long distance. Unfortunately, that could mean there a lack of new physics involved at the cosmic ray energy, much in the same way that confirming a single Higgs particle is a boring outcome not hinting at post-Standard Model physics.
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So to bring it around, what does that have to do with this specific observation in the article, because I can't quite bridge that connection in my head.
Re:Ooh, ooh, I have a bogus theory (Score:4, Informative)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:translating for the athiests. (Score:5, Informative)
re:translating for the athiests (Score:2)
ed
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He states that he is a scientist, how dare you try to explain the well known facts to him, a scientist?
Don't you realize this is science man!
Take your common sense, reason, and facts and go somewhere where that kind of stuff is tolerated.
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My favorite particle is still the OopsLeon.
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It amazes me that this needs to be pointed out. Using a deity's name in a secular and preferably angry context is one of the fundaments of swearing, by deus.
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It amazes me that this needs to be pointed out. Using a deity's name in a secular and preferably angry context is one of the fundaments of swearing, by deus.
And one that is generally frowned upon by religious people. The names are essentially anti-religious, not religious, in nature.
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Thanks. Just this, thanks, but sincerely.
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Religious scientist is like saying technophobic blogger.
Actually, that's not true. But thanks anyway for letting us know about your tunnel vision of reality.
If you ever take a theology class you will learn that there are 2 ways to determine the nature of God. The first way is special revelation (eg. scripture) and the second way through general revelation (eg. science). True theology actually encourages the sciences even though liberal media only picks up on the tabloid "theologists" who are all bat crazy.
Sorry to turn your "reality" upside down on this.
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other particles we find similar to it could be given normal names like UHE particles, or super high energy rays but that doesnt secure grant funding in the theocratic Mormon state of Utah.
If the state of Utah is theocratic and makes funding decisions based on particle names, choosing blasphemous ones is not the path to big research bucks. Mormons take the prohibition against taking the name of deity in vain pretty seriously.
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I prefer the Oh-My-Goddess! [wikipedia.org] particles, OVA version.
Reavers (Score:5, Funny)
Running ther reactors without shielding.
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Eating people alive? Where's that get fun?
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Eating people alive? Where's that get fun?
The screams... it's all about the screams. And dinner. Think of it as the psychotic version of dine-in movie theaters.
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Idiocracy... it's not just a funny movie, it is the future.
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Obligatory:
http://xkcd.com/603/ [xkcd.com]
Their illustrations are worse (Score:3)
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It's only wage-slave click-baiting modern journalists who are responsible for this. It only takes one scientists to slip up and use a funny or sensational nickname for a particle (which will happen eventually), and then these media idiots run with it.
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Actual scientists... people with PhDs... are creating names like "Oh-My-God".
You need to meet more people with doctorates.
Many of them are actual people with senses of whimsy and humour. It's not like they joined some sort of academic cult and were turned into mindless zombies.
Not that that doesn't happen, but it's not part of the PhD process. Many people are able to survive academic life and still think that thagomizer [wikipedia.org] is a perfectly fine name for the spikes on the end of a Stegosaurus's tail.
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fuck off kid.
someone saw something moving at nearly the speed of light packing the energy of a fast moving baseball at 20 odd something orders of magnitude it's mass... and you don't think OMG is an appropriate declaration?
Alien Spacecraft (Score:5, Insightful)
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We need to make them stop polluting out galaxy!
We must put an end to these dirty dirty aliens once and for all! Who's with me!
Bring your pitchforks!
I got my pitchfork right here. Let's go!
How are we going to get there, again?
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This would imply that they are decelerating on the approaching trajectory.
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Or getting as far away from us as they can.
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that's an incredibly disturbing thought. thanks for that. not only can they throw beefed up protons at us, they're getting closer.
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Its aliens who have created an Ion drive capable of accelerating Hydrogen ions to near speed of light.. - Giving an almost limitless supply of thrust. What we are seeing is pollution from the thrusters!
And this is the real reason for global warming :-)
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This post made me remember an old short-story (whose name I've now forgotten) written by Larry Niven. The gist of the story was that some time way in the future when humans had colonized space and things were so peaceful and hunky-dory that they no longer fought wars or weaponized their spaceships, a human spacecraft came upon an alien ship manned by an unknown aggressive and warlike species (the Kzin, maybe), which began to attack them without warning. Despite lacking any weapons with which to defend the
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http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0671878794/0671878794___2.htm
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Hey, that's it! Thanks man.
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From the link above:
From this paper:
So what is going on here with the definitions?
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.5890v2.pdf
Valhalla! (Score:4, Funny)
or perhaps it's from a stargate
Nice Visualization (Score:1)
They have a nice graphic here of the OMG particle hitting the atmosphere.
http://www.spaceanswers.com/deep-space/what-is-the-omg-particle/
That's just the particle beam (Score:1)
Contact (Score:1)
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Nope, it's a targeting laser. We are being painted. The rock will only move at 0.999 C but will be 5 km in diameter.
20 degree radius? (Score:2)
What exactly is a 20 degree radius? One wonders about that article.
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Unless the particles aren't the message but the means of communication. Maybe they form some kind of field mechanic communications bridge to enable instantaneous communications?
We should consider something like this instead of probes like Voyager. Eventually we'll find a way to use fields or lasers as a communications field conduit that enables immediate lagless communications. Someone is probably working on this right now. To some extent the teleportation technology we've seen for communications could use
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Any form of faster-than-light communication naturally leads to the ability to communicate backwards in time via moving frames of reference. So FTL anything means the universe is non-causal and we haven't seen anything to suggest that.
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Or something along these lines. The conclusion was the photon had its past changed because it is impossible to
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lmgtfy.
http://physics.stackexchange.c... [stackexchange.com]
If you have two frames of reference that are not at rest with respect to each other (which is most all of them) and you move from one to the other faster than light and back, you arrive before you left. Any type of faster than light anything (communications or travel) regardless of method (ansible, warp drive, stargate, wormhole, whatever) violates causality because general relativity.
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I'm not sure that's true. If you consider the one-way trip from A to B then, yes, there will be some frames of reference in which you will be calculated to have arrived at B before you left A.
But I don't think heading back to your starting point will mean getting home before you left. In any frame of reference in which you were calculated to have arrived at B before having left A, you will take correspondingly longer t
No... (Score:3)
That's kindof BS...
Mass doesn't expand infinitely nor is there a speed threshold of energy as far as our current understanding of physics goes... This is a simplistic bookkeeping trick that attempts to account for limited acceleration near the speed of light (since F=ma, for a given force, you get less "a" if you somehow fudge 'm' to increase as you approach the speed of light). General relativity explains this much better by having any mass or energy actually distort space time so that you don't ever nee
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Couple books/shows come to mind...
Ender's Game using the ansible for instant communication across great distances (the idea that half of it is in one place, the other half somewhere else) and didn't they do that for very short distances already? like a few feet or so?
but also Dr Who comes to mind... depending on what we send out, can they control us with it?
Could it be a very weak attack?
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Aye. 'Tis the "Runcible" our lad is thinkin' of, Captain.
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For the Dr Who it was this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
The probe is intercepted by a giant spaceship heading for Earth. When the broadcast is shown, an alien face appears and identifies itself as being a Sycorax. The alien demands Earth's surrender and causes a third of the world's population to go into a hypnotic state. The Sycorax threaten to make these people commit suicide unless they are given half of the world's population as slaves. One of the scientists discovers that all of the hypnotised
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They used blood control to control people.
I haven't seen blood control in years!
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We should consider something like this instead of probes like Voyager.
Voyager's purpose was not to communicate with aliens. The "message" on the spacecraft was a publicity stunt concocted by Carl Sagan, and no sane person expects that any alien will ever receive it.
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Carefully chosen words. It's not insane to conceive of future humans deliberately tracking the Voyagers down. Then selling them on eBay. It's not very likely, but it's not impossible.
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Unless the particles aren't the message but the means of communication. Maybe they form some kind of field mechanic communications bridge to enable instantaneous communications?
So that would be like needing to make a phone call immediately. And then standing in line for the next version of iPhone.
I'm certain that advanced civilizations have evolved beyond this kind of behavior.
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It's interstellar Unicorn vomit - ejected our way from the taping of "Mythological Beasts Gone Wild" during spring break, beyond Arcturus.
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If you want the book to reach people, maybe you should apply the same persuasive techniques to Costco stores that we've seen in this very thread.
For instance, you might find yourself in a Costco and see a small group of people gathered around telescopes, discussing the many wonders of the universe they hope to see. You could shove your way to the center of their attention and shout about how Costco censors a completely unrelated book! I can think of no finer way to win the respect and admiration of the sc
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Okay, I've read through a number of your replies, and one question keeps coming up. Who the Hell are you? What skin do you have in this game?
Companies pull books all the time for all kinds of reasons. Why is this one worth disrupting the site over? Are you Dinesh himself, trying desperately to get more income (or mindshare, whatever). Or has he hired you to spread the word on whatever sites you can? Are you simply a Concerned Citizen for whom this one book is the final straw?
Or are you a crazy lib who
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Dinesh D’Souza has always been a hack. it'd be different if it were a good writer, but i might as well be outraged at them pulling twilight from their shelves. some things really aren't worth the ink they're printed with :)
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WTF is "as much energy as well-thrown baseballs"?
That should technically be something like "as much kinetic energy as a well-thrown baseball". In other words, about 50 joules: what you get from a baseball at about 60 miles per hour. So, not major-league fastball fast (90+ mph) but quite a respectable velocity.
And we're not going to talk about assorted forms of chemical or nuclear potential energy in the baseball. If you set fire to a baseball, you could get quite a bit more thermal energy. And you could get a heck of a lot more energy out of a baseba
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I use to be a baseball player, then I took a skateboard to the elbow.
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this comment deserves recognition. please mod parent up :)
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The particle's energy is equivalent to an American baseball travelling fifty-five miles an hour [fourmilab.ch]
How much is that in Volkswagens? And how fast is it travelling relative to imperial standard sheep? Can you measure the kinetic energy in terms of double-decker busses?
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No dumber than measuring energy in baseballs.
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What's that in European baseballs?
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Take the energy of a baseball thrown at 90-something miles per hour. Now instead apply that energy to a single proton. That's an awful, awful lot of energy for one tiny particle.
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Steerriikke!
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No kidding, it should have been in the internationally accepted furlongs per fortnight.
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The unit of energy is fff, the energy required to accelerate one firkin by one furlong-per-fortnight.
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That's purely a velocity measure, to include the energy you need to include the mass.
So it's "hogs heads * (furlongs/fornight)^2"
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The "OOOOOOOOHOHHHHH Particle?"
It has been discovered. Unfortunately, with a very fast decay rate.
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The "Oh, Yes!" particle was faked :(