Comments on: Orphan burst

By: Barton Paul Levenson

Barton Paul Levenson — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:34:54 +0000

Singe writes:

[[One of the more interesting, and somewhat depressing, answers to the Fermi paradox is that a galaxy won’t start seeing advanced civilizations until star formation has slowed enough such that the average amount of time it takes for an advanced civilization to evolve begins to outpace the average time between your run of the mill planetary star system is bathed in lethal radiation from nearby GRBs, and that this is the era our galaxy is in.]]

I think GRBs may have all taken place in an earlier era of universal history. The event this thread is about took place 9.4 billion years ago, did it not? I don’t think there are any nearby GRBs. Dr. Plait is probably more up on this than I am and can correct me if I’m wrong.

By: Singe

Singe — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:01:56 +0000

One of the more interesting, and somewhat depressing, answers to the Fermi paradox is that a galaxy won’t start seeing advanced civilizations until star formation has slowed enough such that the average amount of time it takes for an advanced civilization to evolve begins to outpace the average time between your run of the mill planetary star system is bathed in lethal radiation from nearby GRBs, and that this is the era our galaxy is in.

There’s a paper on it here! http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9901322

By: StevoR

StevoR — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:24:56 +0000

# Quiet_Desperationon 19 Dec 2007 at 1:13 pm wrote :

“Oh, thank goodness! Gamma ray bursts. Phew!

I thought it was going to be a tragic tale of overfed orphans with some vague astronomical connection.”

OVER-fed orphans? Overfed?

I can just see this! (With apologies to Charles Dickens & Oliver Twist.)

“Please sir can I have some more … & more .. & more .. & more & … Ooop! Blerggh!”

POP!

“Right-o orphans get the mops!”

By: Quiet_Desperation

Quiet_Desperation — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:13:22 +0000

Oh, thank goodness! Gamma ray bursts. Phew!

I thought it was going to be a tragic tale of overfed orphans with some vague astronomical connection.

By: Will. M.

Will. M. — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:00:38 +0000

I went to the NASA site to find out why the bursts look as though they’re coming from narrow streams opposite each other from the sphere of the collapsar/hypernova star, but there’s nothing about the shape of the event. I am I in error about the shape? Does the event involve the entire star?

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:44:43 +0000

“Eventually, a faint feature was found that allowed a distance determination: at least 9.4 billion light years, about average for GRBs, but still a mind-numbing distance.”

“There are two somewhat nearby, but they are at least 80,000 and 150,000 light years way, far too distant for either to be the host galaxy.”

Shouldn’t that be far too close?

Also, those galaxies already don’t appear very bright. If the host galaxy is really 100,000 times farther away, is it possible the Keck telescope simply failed to detect it?

By: George

George — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:25:11 +0000

A couple of BAUTers cleared-up my question above. The distances shown are not the distance from us, but distances between the GRB and neighboring galaxies. This is amazaing resolution since the angular distance to the GRB’s nearest galaxy is < 2 arcseconds. The 10 meter Keck is a heck of a scope!

By: Barton Paul Levenson

Barton Paul Levenson — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:16:52 +0000

Again, does the high z-value for these things mean they happened in the early universe but don’t happen any more?

I note the obligatory anti-theist posts by the usual gang of idiots. It seems there isn’t a topic in astronomy where they can’t find some way to say something nasty about creationists or just theists in general. I think I’ll try to stop responding to most of these — there are so many — and will just concentrate on the really outrageous ones.

By: George

George — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:11:55 +0000

By any chance, could those galaxies shown be millions of lightyears distance, in lieu of thousands? They seem mighty close to be so small, and with a “forground” galaxy, which must be closer still. Seems odd, though we have a lot of dwarf galaxies buzzing about.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:07:17 +0000

I read New Scientist’s article on this first: “It may have been the death cry of a star that was born from debris strewn out of a past galactic dustup”.

I saw “death”. I saw “star”. I saw “death star”. Mystery solved.

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:49:54 +0000

I forget which cable channel it was on, but GRBs are noted as one of the many things from space that will kill us all sooner or later.

By: Michael Lonergan

Michael Lonergan — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 12:09:29 +0000

To Tony: If it was gravitational lensing, wouldn’t that imply that there was a nearby massive object? There clearly is no such object here. Could it be elusive Dark Matter playing tricks on us?

By: American Voyager

American Voyager — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:45:01 +0000

Hurry up and get that book published, Phil. The more you talk about cool stuff like this the more I’m having trouble waiting!

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:02:41 +0000

I’m a complete neophyte when it comes to science but the lack of spectrum in this gamma ray burst seems very strange as well.

By: Kent Hovind

Kent Hovind — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 10:56:22 +0000

GRB’s are the farts of God. Well, The Almighty does get gas too.

By: Oz Engineer

Oz Engineer — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:51:44 +0000

Good thought-provoking and informative article. Good responses – all with astronomy as the topic. Now, let’s hear from creationists as to how they explain GRB’s. Actually, examination of extremely rare phenomena requires a special mix of ingenuity and patience, which could well be a topic for a future article.

By: tonyx#

tonyx# — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 04:55:24 +0000

Very interesting, i’m not really informed about this topic, but could it be some sort of gravitational lensing, maybe the galaxy is hiding behind… something? is this possible mr. BA?

By: Michael Lonergan

Michael Lonergan — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 04:11:12 +0000

I was also going to as about Eta Carinae? Also, here is a question: If one of these GRB’s happened within “Striking Distance” what would the consequences be? Would the burst just affect the side of the planet facing the GRB, or would it affect the whole planet? In other words, what exactly would happen? Sorry if that seems like a dumb question.

By: Lurker #753

Lurker #753 — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 04:00:52 +0000

Re: extremely remote chance….

I thought Eta Carinae (at 100+ solar masses and 7.5 kLY) was a good candidate for a GRB in our neighbourhood?

Luckily, we don’t appear to be on axis.

By: The Fool

The Fool — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 03:24:16 +0000

I do have to agree GRBs are quite an interesting topic and a very new topic at that. If you worked on the SWIFT satellite I was wondering when that went into orbit, also do you happen to know what percent of the GRBs that are aimed in our direction SWIFT actually catches?

The Fool
newfrontierblog.blogspot.com

By: Steve H

Steve H — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 03:21:39 +0000

Yup, Warp drive!

By: Rowsdower

Rowsdower — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:36:02 +0000

I understand that the amount of energy in GRBs are incredibly powerful, but reading your article made me think: Knowing that GRBs are that powerful and that they produce energy in the gamma-ray spectrum, and take into account that they’re moving away from us (aren’t most objects moving away from us?), and since things moving away from us are red-shifted in the spectrum, just how high up in the spectrum do these things emit energy? Is there an upper limit for the EM spectrum? (If there is, I’m sure Max Planck’s name is involved.)

By: andy

andy — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:53:07 +0000

Could it have been a coalescing neutron star binary? Since it would take some time for the orbit to decay due to gravitational radiation, such a system could travel through space for quite a long time, perhaps long enough to get a long way from its host galaxy.