Hubble Spots Star Explosion Astronomers Can't Explain 154
schwit1 writes: The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the explosion of a star that does not fit into any theory for stellar evolution. "The exploding star, which was seen in the constellation Eridanus, faded over two weeks — much too rapidly to qualify as a supernova. The outburst was also about ten times fainter than most supernovae, explosions that destroy some or all of a star. But it was about 100 times brighter than an ordinary nova, which is a type of surface explosion that leaves a star intact. 'The combination of properties is puzzling,' says Mario Livio, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. 'I thought about a number of possibilities, but each of them fails' to account for all characteristics of the outburst, he adds." We can put this discovery on the bottom of a very long list of similar discoveries by Hubble, which this week is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its launch.
More things in space (Score:5, Insightful)
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We may have just found (Score:2)
Re:We may have just found (Score:5, Funny)
A new type of star !
It was obviously an alien weapon and the government is trying to explain it away.
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Well funny that I was thinking along the similar way...
like if a Dyson bubble that just went overload
or maybe local region of gas ignited
and what we are seeing is something like a flash over event that can happen in a regular fire.
amazing what we find all the time in space.
Re:We may have just found (Score:5, Funny)
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No, dumbass, science has an aversion to accepting every hare-brained idea that comes along. Science is built on empirical observation and provable theories. While accepted scientific models may be stable, they are not static.
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Do the gene pool a favor and have some kind of tragic chainsaw-induced trouser accident.
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Hey, they're right. Where do you think all the "Humans aren't causing Global Warming" "science" comes from. Sure it's atrocious science, but as long as someone with a Ph.D. and a lab coat is telling people what they want to here, plenty won't look too to see if they're actually scientists or just sciency PR flaks.
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But thanks to recent advances in stem cell research and the fine work of Doctors Krinski and Altschuler, Clevon should regain full reproductive function!
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Science hates new ideas and goes out of their way to protect the status quo at all costs.
Poe or projecting? Everyone I know is excited.
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Science may not be dogmatic, but scientists sure are.
Old scientists don't change their minds; they just die off. You can even still find a few (respected in their day) cosmologists who endorse Steady State Theory if you look hard enough.
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Obvious troll is obvious. Go play somewhere else, kiddo.
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i think it just means we need to stop all broadcasts immediately, and pray that the star eater hasn't noticed us yet.
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It just means there are more things in space that we don't fully understand yet. But every discovery adds knowledge so we can understand it better.
Really, what objects in space do we fully understand? (I'm not being sarcastic!)
We don't even fully understand the earth yet, and we can perform direct measurements on it.
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Re:More things in space (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude sounds like a crank. For example: this article [haltonarp.com] raises a number of red flags for me. One, he references his own work as the sole basis for a conclusion, and two, he whines like a 5 year old:
Waah! The mean nasty mainstream astronomers won't completely change the field because I said so! Waaah!
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begin (again) to guess what we're observing.
Your entire premise is wrong - we don't guess, only observe. Guessing is junk science. Observation is "this is not like the others" and then we begin to wonder why.
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Nah, it's more ignorant science junk. Shock! Awe! No one can explain this???!!
History Channel2. It's your kind of place. All normal science is wrong, and everything is due to ancient aliens.
Halton Arp? Seriously? Who's next, Uri Gellar?
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" It was _speculated_ years ago that red shift can't explain distance, by Halton Arp. "
There, that's better.
Note that in the Observational Sciences like Astronomy, pretty much nothing can be proven, compared to the Experimental Sciences.
We can just get better and better Speculations.
BTW, Arp was wrong. The Big Bang has not only been observed, with results close to Theoretical Predictions, but we are getting closer to Experimental Proof as well.
" I'm not offering a hypothesis of my own..."
Even better. Don't
War (Score:1)
Probably some long-forgotten interstellar war.
Re: War (Score:1)
My first thought was "death star".
Re: War (Score:4, Funny)
My first thought was "death star".
Mine too. And from TFA:
The light that Hubble recorded from the newly found outburst left its distant home galaxy 7.8 billion years ago.
So it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
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Or, due to a strange quirk in the space-time continuum, we are actually looking at a future version of our own planet exploding. Don't worry about paradoxes ripping the universe apart, though. The fact that we can see it, means that there's no way to avoid it so there won't be a contradiction. Moving right along.
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A fleet of the latest X- and Y-Wing fighters - and one old freighter - successfully destroy the new Imperial Death Star.
Damn Rebel scum.
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I'm pretty sure it was the Shadows. The Vorlons didn't get there in time.
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Re:War (Score:5, Funny)
Probably some long-forgotten interstellar war.
Nothing that exciting. Just a Vogon constructor fleet doing their job. They posted the notice. Nobody could be bothered to read it.
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How funny this would be if it was true. sad also but I would laugh for the last 5 minutes or so.
Meanwhile........ (Score:2, Funny)
In a galaxy far, far away, Princess Leia turned her head away while Darth Vader took out his anger at the old empire for taking away his hot grits.
Tarkin Jnr here (Score:2)
Can't remember where I parked my star class death star..... Did I go on a bender last night.... time to lay off the sauce.
I blame the Vogons (Score:5, Funny)
Starlifted Dyson sphere ? (Score:3)
The faint burst might be from the extra stellar activity from starlifitng all the material needed to make the dyson sphere.
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Well, it WAS a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
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I believe it occurred in the Alderan system...
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Ahh, the great Zergoblott Event (Score:1)
It's obvious. (Score:3, Insightful)
A wizard did it.
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I find it hilarious yet bewildering that, after having to dig through a bajillion bad sci-fi jokes about the star, the one person who says 'wizard' gets modded troll.
What do people have against wizards?
I just realized (Score:1)
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It IS actually
A long time ago
in a galaxy far away
Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now. We passed then. Just now. We're at now, now.
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It is now, here. But in a galaxy far, far away, it was a long time ago.
Not suprnova? (Score:2)
Then it must have been a mininova.
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Possibly a Chevy Nova.
Maybe even Aldo Nova.
Listen, I'm sorry. (Score:2)
I'm not saying I didn't do this. I just have trouble controlling my temper sometimes. Bad day at work, OK?
Starbust (Score:1)
Perhaps this is the first time we record a Leviathan entering on Starbust. Astrobiologists should analise this.
Bomb number 20 went off. (Score:3)
It's Praxis of course. (Score:4, Funny)
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Praxis wasn't a star, you stupid geek*!
* oh wait...
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Not to take anything away from all the jokes, but wouldn't Qo'onoS be in our Galaxy, not another one 7.8 billion light years away?
The Rift is Real (Score:1)
What about distance? (Score:5, Interesting)
The host galaxy is quite far from us. At these distances we can only rely on the red shift which I always thought not to be completely accurate.
So, if that galaxy is a little bit closer to us then there may not be any mystery here.
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The are lots of ways to measure the distance to stars. But you are correct that certain methods are better for certain distance ranges
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wri... [ucla.edu]
Weapons testing? (Score:1)
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
From the light universe... (Score:3)
The Monks (Score:4, Informative)
It is the remains of a star system whose inhabitants were unwilling to build laser cannons for The Monks (see "The Fourth Profession" by Larry Niven).
Small blast followed by ordinary blast (Score:2)
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Except that the two blasts were in different locations. It is possible that it was path time differences between two lensed images.
Simple (Score:1)
Supernova, ordinary nova, and inbetween the newly discovered bossa-nova.
Why do I have to explain everything every time?
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Doesn't go?
What if.. (Score:2)
only one explanation... (Score:2, Insightful)
It must have been a champagne supernova in the sky.
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Isn't the host galaxy lensed ? (Score:2)
I looked at the picture given in TFA and it looks to me that the host galaxy of this mysterious non-nova, non-supernova explosion is a background galaxy, lensed by the foreground cluster. It does not look like a member of this foreground cluster.
I would say, distance estimates for such background galaxies are not particularly easy to make.
Galactic rotation at ludicrous speed! (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing that struck me about those pics, was the distance the star moved from Jan 2014 to Aug 2014. It appeared to cover roughly 5-10% of the outer diameter of the host galaxy (although the star could be very well be deeper inside the galaxy). The Solar System takes about 226 million years to orbit the Milky Way. This thing appears to orbit at 13 years!
That makes me think their preliminary analysis of these being two separate events is correct. Although, I am not an astrophysicist, so what do I know?
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No, it's not a moving object. The idea is we could be seeing the same event twice. The image of the galaxy is so distorted by the gravity of foreground objects, that the light from the explosion reaches us along two different paths. One of them is a little longer, so we see a "replay" of the event a little later.
Amargosa Star (Score:2)
Obviously Soren has something to do with it...
Hmmm (Score:1)
There's a war out there...
Another civilization discovers zero-point energy. (Score:2)
Briefly.
Oh, that is what it was. OK, OK. (Score:2)
Human limitations? (Score:1)
This is more a limitation of the researcher than of the science. This type of Short duration hyperbright nova is not unknown and elsewhere in the literature there are several theories as to their Natural origins. They have been a few detected over the last 50 years but because of their rarity a comprehensive analysis is still wanting.
So this is not a NEW HUBBLE DISCOVERY, more a OH NICE! you saw one too.
Obvious answer: (Score:2)
Considering that this happened far, far away, and therefore long, long ago; I think we all know who was responsible. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki... [wikia.com]
So a planet-shattering kaboom? (Score:3)
I have an explanation (Score:2)
Then they decrypted the radio transmission (Score:2)
A British voice was heard saying...
"And here's where he lives..." (some sort of bang)
"And here's his neighbor..." (bang again)
"And here's his neighbor's summer home..." (bang and some thumps)
"And here's the town by the beach - tropical island - the whole planet he lived on!"
The bangs became curiously long and bass-level, and the voice broke off into maniacal cackling.
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This demonstrates the importance of not being seen.
Long ago, in a galaxy far away... (Score:2)
The deathstar exploded
Maybe... (Score:2)
Maybe using Endurium for fuel wasn't a good idea (Score:2)
There was always something fishy about those ruins.
The fun of being clueless (Score:2)
...is that you get to speculate more wildly. Suppose two stars that are not yet (or never could be) able to supernova, smacked into each other at some very impressive clip. Their cores interact and there is briefly a mass in a state for a supernova...which is blown apart in the early seconds of the supernova because uniquely, the relevant core material is asymmetric and the two lobes are separated.
Is that possible? Is it gibberish? I don't know, because I never studied astronomy except by watching, we
New name? (Score:1)
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Ten times fainter? "One tenth as bright" reads better and makes more sense.
In electrical engineering, there is something called admittance [wikipedia.org], which is the inverse of impedance [wikipedia.org]. Are there similar inverse terms for radiometry? If so, then "ten times fainter" makes sense, because it would be using a "faintness" scale that is established.
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Are you sure it would make sense? If you said 10% fainter how many times fainter would that be?
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10%
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Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning", four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived only by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was ab
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Could also just be construction work on an interstellar highway.