Deep Space X-ray Blast Blinds Space Observatory

[The Sushi Bandit]

Source: Current.com & Physorg.com

A blast of the brightest X-rays ever detected from beyond our Milky Way galaxy's neighborhood temporarily blinded the X-ray eye on NASA's Swift space observatory today. The X-rays traveled through space for 5-billion years before slamming into and overwhelming Swift's X-ray Telescope. The blindingly bright blast came from a gamma-ray burst, a violent eruption of energy from the explosion of a massive star morphing into a new black hole.

More at link...

Read more: http://current.com/news/92544146_deep-space-x-ray-blast-blinds-space-observatory.htm

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This is frickin cool!

[damntexdem]

1. Extragalactic terrorists from 5b years ago! Quick, we have to declare war!

I mean, they started sending these X-rays at us 5 billion years ago. We can't wait another day to invade their galaxy!

[Arctic Dave]

2. That is impressive.

[daleo]

3. CCDs on space telescopes can get saturarted pretty easily

I think it's called a pile-up or something like that. I will ask my son about this - he's in X-ray astrophysics (pulsars). Most of his data is from XMM Newton, so the specs of the telescopes might be quite different.

The photon counts in the article seem awfully high. Gamma Ray Bursters are very powerful, though.

[rug]

4. Alert! This is 5 billion years old!

[mindwalker_i]

9. Yeah no kidding, it's 5 freakin' billion years old

Hell, that's older than Cheney! It don't belong in no latest breaking news.

[Liberation Angel]

5. Freaking awesomeness plus! On edit: "DUCK!!!"

and cover!


Damn, the burst is older than our galaxy yet it knocked out our most advanced technology.

we are so f---cked

or else we are just a little teeny tiny insignificant pile of atoms which can be obliterated at any moment by something that is older than God.

Or something...

Just really

That is so awesome.

I can't even wrap my head around it.

I THOUGHT June 21st seemed a little hot.

I KNOW

Let's send one BACK.

A Gamma blast!

Tag!

They're it.

never

mind


(with apologies to Italo Calvino)

[qazplm]

8. MW is probably around 8 billion years old

give or take, so not quite older than our galaxy.

[myrna minx]

6. Cool! K&R

[nilram]

7. and now the new black hole is after us! it doesn't like peeping toms!

[Wilms]

10. And nobody saw this coming???

:D

[LanternWaste]

11. I'm blaming Obama for not moving fast enough on this one...

I'm blaming Obama for not moving fast enough. He's had a few billions years to take care of this one for Pete's sake.

:evilgrin:

[Marthe48]

13. he had the seat numbers

but no names

[WinkyDink]

12. Nobody could have imagined........

[AngryAmish]

14. I blame Bush.

[Baclava]

15. It happened on June 21st? It's a sign!

Oh yeah - the cosmic wheel of doom is spinning.....tick...tick...tick



The brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen in X-rays temporarily blinded Swift's X-ray Telescope on 21 June 2010. This image merges the X-rays (red to yellow) with the same view from Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope, which showed nothing extraordinary.

http://www.physorg.com/news198327539.html