[FUBAR-BDHR]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/03/21/exploding.star.ap/index.html

[blackhole]

Damn shivans! Don't they know that stars are a limited resource?!

Seriously though, thats incredible. That star is 7.5 billion light years away - halfway across the goddamn universe - and someone could have seen it with the naked eye. Thats a big explosion!

[watsisname]

Technically it wasn't the explosion itself that we saw, but the light created when the shockwave interacted with the surrounding material.  Regardless, it's pretty cool that it was the most distant thing ever that's visible to the unaided eye.

****ing Shivans.

[Mobius]

About the title: lol

About the supernova:

[WMCoolmon]

Just think, that star could've been born when the universe was relatively new, and it's been dead for longer than the solar system has been alive...

And we have a hard time getting a comparatively tiny hunk of metal to move a sextillionth of that distance without using "precious" fuels and causing air pollution.

It's funny how insignificant world problems seem when you see what's possible on an astronomical scale.

[ShadowGorrath]

WAIT, you mean to tell me that the Shivans could already destroy stars 7.5 billion years ago ?! ( yea, you know the thing that it takes the light to travel 1 year from a light year away, but I don't think you're stupid not to know that ).

Anyway, I just lost my will to fight the Shivans...

If seriously though, the whole thing is awesome for the fact that it's so far away and still can be seen from here. Beat the 2.5 MILLION light year away record.

[BloodEagle]

    

Curtis stripping is more important than a star exploding!? Corn flakes are more important than a woman being killed!?

I know that it's based on views, but it still disturbs me.

[Jeff Vader]

Bah, it is quite accurate. I mean, who cares about some pregnant chicks? Dude, cornflakes!

[Flipside]

That's a very short lived burst for a supernova isn't it? Less than an hour, I thought they lit up for weeks?

[Herra Tohtori]

That's a very short lived burst for a supernova isn't it? Less than an hour, I thought they lit up for weeks?

Come on, that whole galaxy will probably be ionized... it's just that at 7.5 Gly distance, it takes a gargantuan bang for even the initial burst and the subsequent luminance decrease to be visible.

For galaxies closer to the incident, it will stay pretty bright for a long time indeed, just probably not very observable to us.


Anyhow, should there have been any poor buggers living in that galaxy, this kinda puts the humanity's problems in right perspective. What's a little climate change and a few wars now and then when your whole galaxy's center could explode in a great ball of whatchamacallits that could be seen 7.5 light years away...?

[Nuke]

anyone who lived in that galaxy back then would probibly have had to wear some serious sunblock, or just got cooked to death. every time a star blows up theres a good possibility that an advanced civilization of aliens got destroyed. muahahaha. cant wait till betelgeuse goes nuke (assuming it hasnt already ).

[Colonol Dekker]

If you say it three times then you'll save it. . . . . . Or set it off,
I really can't remember how that film worked.

[Charismatic]

Wow thats not something you see every day.

Did anyone actually SEE it?

[watsisname]

That's a very short lived burst for a supernova isn't it? Less than an hour, I thought they lit up for weeks?

Technically it wasn't a normal supernova, but a GRB (gamma-ray burst).  GRB's are still a bit of a mystery, but the most widely-held theory is that they happen when the most massive of the massive stars collapse on themselves, creating a black hole and releasing a giant flood of gamma rays.  Point is that although they're similar to supernovae, GRB's are thousands if not millions of times more energetic.  That's why this one is so significant, it was so bright that it was visible to the unaided eye from a such a tremendous distance.  If that occured closer to us, (like in our own galaxy), it'd outshine the full moon, maybe even the sun.  And we'd be dead.

Wow thats not something you see every day.

Did anyone actually SEE it?

NASA says nobody's made a claim to have actually seen it visually.  Apparently at its peak it was about as bright as the north star, but only for a few minutes, so it's unlikely anyone saw it and recognized it as anything unusual.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Yea those are the big boys that occur in star nurseries that result in the blackholes at the center of galaxies.  So the theory goes anyway.  I think they shoot out all the energy kind of like a beam  in only 1 or 2 directions.  So not only are they rare to begin with but they have to be aimed in the right direction to be seen from Earth. 

[colecampbell666]

That's very cool.

[Gortef]

But the actual topic of this tread is quite amazing. Let's just say that luckily it was brought to our knowledge this way instead seeing it up and close. Wow.

bloody Shivans... find another hobby than blowing up the stars.

[DeepSpace9er]

Im not a scientist but, according to it isnt the universe 4.5billion years old? If thats the case, how could we have ever seen an explosion 7.5 billion light years away? The star would have had to form, go through its lifecycle, and go supernova. Granted larger stars have a much shorter life cycle and burn brighter, but thats still a discrepancy of 3 billion years. What did I miss?

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I think the current age is estimated at around 14 billion but some think it could be as old as 20 billion.  I think the article said it was halfway across the know universe so 7.5x2 = 15billion which fits into the range.   

[WMCoolmon]

According to Wikipedia,

Astronomical observations indicate that the universe is 13.73 ± 0.12 billion years old and at least 93 billion light years across. The event that started the universe is called the Big Bang. At this point in time all matter and energy of the observable universe was concentrated in one point of infinite density. After the Big Bang the universe started to expand to its present form. Since special relativity states that matter cannot exceed the speed of light in a fixed space-time, it may seem paradoxical that two galaxies can be separated by 93 billion light years in 13 billion years; however, this separation is a natural consequence of general relativity. Stated simply, space can expand with no intrinsic limit on its rate; thus, two galaxies can separate more quickly than the speed of light if the space between them grows.

Also, it's entirely possible even discounting that fact above. If the two galaxies were going nearly opposite each other at the speed of light, they could be 9 billion light years away from each other. Speed of light is a confusing thing, though. It must not be an absolute maximum since you can measure it on earth, and I've never heard of any experiments having to take the universal direction of the experiments into account; I do not remember the entire explanation for why that is however.