NASA Detects Nearby Mystery Explosion

starexplorer2001 writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA has detected a 'totally new' mystery explosion near our galaxy." From the article: "The event, detected Feb. 18, looks something like a gamma-ray burst (GRB), scientists said. But it is much closer--about 440 million light-years away--than others. And it lasted about 33 minutes. Most GRBs are billions of light-years away and last less than a second or just a few seconds."

Re:I'm confused

[ChowRiit]

That's right: nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, not even information. We are witnessing something that happened millions of years ago, but because the electromagnetic waves (light, gamma rays etc) carrying the information are all travelling at the same speed (the speed of light), we get a chronological "look" at how the event panned out millions of years ago.

In actual fact, when you look at, say, a chair, you're actually seeing the chair as it was several (nano/pico/something, not sure of the exact time interval) seconds ago (a very small time period).

Re:Two words

[HTH NE1]

I thought I'd felt a great disturbance in the Force.

For the technical details, see ...

[StupendousMan]

IAU Circular 8674, which states in part

[a spectrum] obtained with Gemini-South telescope (+ GMOS) on Feb. 21.024 UT, shows that underlying a power-law continuum are features consistent with a broad-lined type-Ib/c supernova (designated 2006aj) near maximum light, confirming the findings of Masetti et al. (GCN 4803).

There is a good deal of news in the GRBLog:

[utexas.edu]http://grad40.as.utexas.edu/grblog.php [utexas.edu]

Just search for "GRB 060218".

It appears to be a Type Ib/c supernova -- meaning a massive star, which has lost most of its hydrogen envelope, running out of fuel in its core and exploding -- in a relatively nearby galaxy. By "nearby", I mean "at a redshift of z=0.033", which is still much farther away than the Virgo or Coma clusters of galaxies.

It is currently around magnitude 18, and may brighten by a magnitude or so, but will still require a pretty big telescope and sensitive camera to detect.

Re:Is this some new meaning of the word 'nearby'?

[meringuoid]

Think of it this way - life appeared about a billion years ago, so that was twice as long ago as when this event happened. We're seeing an event that happenned a little before the dinosaurs appeared.

I think you're a bit off. Life appeared very soon after the Earth formed - a bit over four billion years ago. IIRC, multicellular life got going at about a billion years ago, and vertebrates invaded the land about half a billion years ago.

Of course if you happen to live in Kansas then YMMV.

Re:Is this some new meaning of the word 'nearby'?

[advocate_one]

2,586,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away is 'nearby' ?!

Yes... cosmologically speaking... it's only just outside the local supercluster... it's on this map [anzwers.org]... you can't miss it... just remember to take a left at Alburquerque

Universe

[SchrodingersRoot]

According to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) [nasa.gov], which, IIRC, is the most recent measuring of the Hubble Constant, the value for the Hubble Constant is 71 ± 4 km/s/Mpc. This would give the universe an age of 13.7 ± 0.2 billion years.

Other findings of WMAP include the makeup of the universe as 4% matter, 23% dark matter, and 73% dark energy, and a flat geometry for the universe.

Best estimates for the age of our solar system are currently about 4.6 billion years. Life ostensibly started very quickly, on a cosmological timeline. IIRC, earliest evidence of life points to around 3.5 billion years ago.

But your point about it being a lot more recent on a cosmological scale are correct.

Re:For the technical details, see ...

[graemecoates]

The parent post seems pretty quite knowledgeable... anyone wanna translate it into dumb-ass for the rest of us?

I'll have a go...

[a spectrum] obtained with Gemini-South telescope (+ GMOS) on Feb. 21.024 UT, shows that underlying a power-law continuum are features consistent with a broad-lined type-Ib/c supernova (designated 2006aj) near maximum light, confirming the findings of Masetti et al. (GCN 4803).

A very big telescope in Chile (GMOS) took an image of the object and recorded it's spectrum (light broken down by wavelength and recorded). From the spectrum, there is continuum radiation than has intensity proportional to the wavelength raised to some power. However, there are also features (spectral lines) in the spectrum which suggest it is a Type Ib or Ic supernova (exploding star).

It appears to be a Type Ib/c supernova -- meaning a massive star, which has lost most of its hydrogen envelope, running out of fuel in its core and exploding -- in a relatively nearby galaxy. By "nearby", I mean "at a redshift of z=0.033", which is still much farther away than the Virgo or Coma clusters of galaxies.

Supernovae like these occur due to the collapse of the core of a star as there is not enough fuel to sustain fusion to keep the star from collapsing under it's own gravity. The implosion creates a massive amount of heat which causes the explosion we see. Different to the proposed mechanism for a Ia Supernova.

It's actually pretty close (in universe terms). (Still a damn long way away!) The redshift (z) is defined at wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. The Virgo and Coma clusters are large nearby galaxy clusters.

It is currently around magnitude 18, and may brighten by a magnitude or so, but will still require a pretty big telescope and sensitive camera to detect.

Each decrease in magnitude is 100^1/5 times brighter than the previous one (it's a little confusing). A magnitude 0 star is about 2.5 times brighter than a magnitude 1 which is 2.5times brighter than magnitude 2, and so on. The brightest star in the sky (Sirius - visible tonight) is magnitude -1.6 (negatives are fine). The dimmest star you'll see with unaided eyesight is about 6 in really good dark skies, about 2 or 3 from a city. The Sun is -26.7, the moon about -13. This object is about 60000 times dimmer than a magnitude 6 star. (100^(12/5)).

Amateur telescopes with ccd cameras should be able to record this. It'd be pretty much impossible to actually see with the human eye and a telescope.

In brief, a star went bang; it's the first time we've been able to see it this early in the explosion; it's fairly close (but not too close); Don't bother to try to look for it in binoculars.