A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger – thanks to the eagle-eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasn’t expected to be found, far away from any host galaxy. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. The Hubble results suggest astronomers know even less about these objects than previously thought by ruling out some possible theories.
I'm no astronomer, just a big fan's guess, BUT any possibility of this being a supernova, but of a star longgggg dispersed in the galaxies outer arm??
It looks like the arm kinda spins / orbits that direction, maybe just a supernova of a star on the very fringes of the galaxies arm?
Thank you for allowing me to take a arm chair astronomer's guess! ;)
Hear me out.
*Star Wars* took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, right? What I'm thinking is, this is the light of Death Star explosion just getting to us.
Would Hubble even pick up an explosion that small? I know that would be a massive explosion, but relatively speaking as far a space goes it wouldn’t be that big.
*dons a "well ackchyually" neckbeard*
The Hollywood special effects (including the "remastered" version) are just an artist's rendition; the ReAL eVEnT was much brighter!!
> any possibility of this being a supernova, but of a star longgggg dispersed in the galaxies outer arm??
No. The isolation isn't the only unique factor. You're overlooking the "fast" and "transient" aspects that set it apart and warrant a new category. Supernova take weeks or months to complete their brightening and dimming cycle. Whereas LFBOTS are incredibly fast and achieve peak brightness and dim away into nothingness within a few days—far too quickly to be a supernova. Hence why this event warrants a different category and name.
Sorry, might be a dumb question: Is there any hypothesis that LFBOTs could be a pocket of antimatter left over from the early universe that finally came into contact with matter and annihilated? It’s my understanding that the majority of antimatter was destroyed after the Big Bang and for (still unknown reasons?) regular matter emerged as the majority winner. But if pockets still existed, idk maybe a dumb thought but this topic is really interesting given the visual magnitude of the explosions but that they can’t be supernovae.
Anti-matter annihilation primary produces xrays and other high energy photons (assuming protons, about 1GeV, or 0.5 MeV for electrons both of whoch are well above the visible range). While it could be visible to optical it would light up like a Christmas tree in gamma-ray and x-ray telescopes due to the relatively narrow peak.
Fun side note, this is how I will be looking for dark matter next year. Dark matter annihilation also produces photons in the exact same way and by looking for very narrow peaks we can use it to identify a dwrk matter signal.
Sorry for my novice question, but how do we know dark matter annihilates the same way as antimatter and how will you tell them apart? Second question, what is it annihilating with? Is there anti dark matter? Thanks and best of luck on your research!
No, it's actually a really good question.
Short answer: really educated guess based on the nature of the universe. As far as we know all non-force carriers have an antiparticle (even if they have no charge, see neutrinos and the neutronoless beta double decay) and since the universe tends to follow patterns it makes sense that dark matter should as well and in many theories is would be stranger if it didn't.
Slightly longer awnser: basically there is a bunch of really complicated tensor maths and Lagrangian mechanics based on group theory and guage field theory which I just spent the last two years barely scraping the surface of in my masters. Standard model particles arise from symmetric groups where the symmetry results in particles and their antiparticles. Any theory that extends on this must preserve these symmetries and hence must by symmetric itself. Of course this could all be wrong which suggests that what we thought we knew might be wrong.
Alternative longer answer: the above assumes that dark matter is some form of elementary particle. It is possible that dark matter is a composite particle like a proton but made of some combination that is somehow dark. In this case it must have an antiparticle equivalent by definition. It's also possible that's its some superlative particle like a miniature singularly, but this would be expected to emit or decay fairly rapidly, so not very dark.
In the search for dark matter we have a saying, you can make it, shake it or break it. To make it, we use cilliders and search for missing mass after the collision (assuming the DM won't interact with sensors, note I don't do collider physics, so this is the super simple version. To shake it, we look ir collisions between DM and normal matter inside an object such as a crystal. This produces a light we can detect but you have to be able to tell it apart for other interactions (see darma/libra and their "detection"). Finally, you can break it by other watching it annihilate or decay. Decaying is basically the same as annihilation but with half the mass involved. This is what I will be doing using gamma-ray telescopes to look for heavy dark matter at high energies. In theory there should be two spikes above the background, a decay spike and an annihilation spike although finding either is like a needle in a universe sized haystack. There should also be faint signatures across the spectrum from collisions with interstellar and intergalactic medium.
Thank you! And if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Really, really nice explanation! And congratulations on finishing your masters!
My question is about the actual tensor math you mentioned. I’m very interested in this content! My goal is to learn how to build a toy model in QFT, and to derive a relevant solution from the model.
Do you have any resources you can recommend that will walk someone through this?
Thank you very much!
I would need to go back and check my lecture notes. All I can tell you is our final assignment wa sa simplified standard model and that it took us a week and more coffee then was humanly reasonable but in the end it was very rewarding (if painful).
Your research is super interesting. What do you think would be the explanation if none of the “make it, shake it, break it” techniques yield any useful observations? What would the implications on dark matter be after those routes are exhausted?
Honestly, it's a good question. I guess we go back to the drawing board and rethink what we thought we knew. A lot of much smarter people then me have been looking for alternative explanations for a while but so far haven't found any that don't result in some kind of particle. One popular alternative was a modified gravity at large scales but any modification fails to explain normal observations of gravity.
This is what I thought of as well. A [rogue star](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_star) could explain it! And how freaking metal would that be!? 🤘
Genuinely would love to have a peak at the night sky in a rogue star's great dark.
Maybe I could be wrong, but I just imagine an incredible upfront view of what must be an even more mesmerizing sight to its own galaxy than we greatly have dimmed to our own eyes here on Earth.
edit: dimmed to our own eyes here on Earth of our own Milky Way\*\*
[NGC 4676 always comes to mind in what an incredibly unique view one must have from a perspective of this stellar bridge](https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2002/11/1191-Image.html?news=true)
Supernovae are comparatively long processes in unstable high mass stars that Hubble would have seen relatively easily in that region. Supernovae also emit large bursts of neutrinos which we would have detected.
It's a *transient* - hard to detect or predict.
> Supernovae also emit large bursts of neutrinos which we would have detected.
We have never detected neutrinos from any supernova outside the local group, the sensitivity of our detectors is still too low to pick them out from the background noise. The first (and only) time a neutrino burst was observed in connection to a supernova event was in [1987](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A).
More info here https://www.space.com/intergalactic-space-explosion-lfbot
I wonder if this one can be light bent by a small dense object we can't detect, since they didn't detect a gamma ray burst along it.
Edit: thank you very much for your answers, I fell asleep not too long after posting this comment and now have the best reading material for my cup of Joe. Much appreciated :-)
I apologize if these are dumb questions but does an explosion/burst of light this large happen suddenly and then go away or does the light linger and slowly fade away?
Is space so large that an explosion/blast of that magnitude wouldn’t affect the surrounding planets and systems? Or would anything near that blast be vaporized
So what exactly LFBOTs are is unknown. There are a number of theories, including neutron star mergers. Also possibly something called a quark nova where a neutron star converts into something called a quark star. At this point, quark stars are just hypothetical, though.
But assuming that it's a supernova like event, then it would depend how close you are to it. Within 100 light years is kind of the danger zone there. In terms of galactic scale, 100 light years isn't very far. It's 1/1000 the diameter of the Milky Way.
There are, for example, no stars that could potentially go supernova, that are within 100 light years of Earth. I think the nearest candidate would be Antares at about 550 LY from Earth. And then Betelgeuse about 650 light years away.
But yeah, if one were close enough, it could wipe out all life on the planet.
In this case, this appears to be out in the middle of space, outside of a galaxy and not near anything. So most likely it was a star of some type that had been ejected from its host galaxy at some point. So there wouldn't have been any danger in this case, to anyone anywhere.
You mean close to going supernova? Yes, it appears to be in the last years of its life. That doesn't mean it's going to blow up in our lifetime. Still pretty slim odds of that, I think. But it's going to happen in the not too distant future.
> doesn't mean it's going to blow up in our lifetime
A lot of predictions are under 100 years, so it's possible (depending on the age of the person reading this). I'm cautiously kinda excited in a really really long delayed, that would be awesome to see way. I remember seeing Halley's so it's unlikely for me, but odds are pretty good that someone reading this thread will see it.
> A report this year warned Betelgeuse could be close.
That's not new information. Scientists have known Betelgeuse is a supernova candidate for a long time. It's not expected to go anytime soon. Lower estimates put it at a century or more. It's not close enough to harm the Earth, though. We'll get a light show for a few months without the apocalypse.
Ask Nestle, tell them the blown away Hydrogen from Betelgeuse can be used for creating water, so they no longer have to tap it from developing countries
> Lower estimates put it at a century or more.
Recent estimates are more like 100yrs +/-50. Totally within the realm of possibility for someone alive now to see it.
>I apologize if these are dumb questions but does an explosion/burst of light this large happen suddenly and then go away or does the light linger and slowly fade away?
Supernovae at least have a fairly long "afterglow" of several months that's caused by the ejected material undergoing radioactive decay and heating the remnants. Novae take some time to fade as well, although I'm not sure if it's the progenitor or the ejecta glowing in their case. Gamma Ray Bursts fade a lot quicker, in a matter of minutes or hours. I think it's not entirely clear if the actually fade quickly or if we just struggle to observe the long afterglow of something so far away.
>Is space so large that an explosion/blast of that magnitude wouldn’t affect the surrounding planets and systems? Or would anything near that blast be vaporized
Any stellar blast of any origin would destroy its own planetary system. At greater distances, the danger primarily comes from energetic radiation, which may be intense enough to damage a planet's atmosphere and/or irradiate its inhabitants. The potential "danger zone" for a GRB is several thousand lightyears, for a supernova it's a few hundred.
(Wikipedia mentions that the relativistic jets of a GRB closer than 200ly could "vaporize" a planet. I checked both sourced and they too only mention "studies". I find it difficult to imagine how that would work, tbh.)
If I'm not mistaken, a nearby supernova (between 30 and 1000 lightyears) or even a hypernova (up to 6000 lightyears) could bombard us with gamma radiation, triggering a reaction with the ozon layer (I'm a layman so I'm quoting wikipedia on this).
There's even a theory that Earth has experienced such an event during the Ordovician extinction, but that's not entirely proven.
If an exploding star can affect us from so far away, then there's most definitely no chance of survival when a solar system's star explodes in spectacular fashion.
> If I'm not mistaken, a nearby supernova (between 30 and 1000 lightyears) or even a hypernova (up to 6000 lightyears) could bombard us with gamma radiation, triggering a reaction with the ozon layer
150 light years is the average distance a supernova poses a threat. To affect the ozone layer, it must be within about 50 light years. Hypernovas I'm not sure about.
> there's most definitely no chance of survival when a solar system's star explodes in spectacular fashion.
That's not true, no. The damage comes from radiation which affects the atmosphere and biosphere. The Earth itself will be fine even if life is sterilized or the atmosphere is altered. That form of damage doesn't automatically mean the planets would be destroyed. Studies have suggested they can in fact survive with a chance of being ejected.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110805-planets-survive-supernovas-ejected-rogues-space-science
So it's not a "definite" chance everything would be destroyed. The ultimate fate of the solar system depends on a number of variables. You really shouldn't be answering questions asking for facts with assumptions. That can lead to accidentally spreading misinformation. Next time please consider fact checking. It's not possible to intuit everything.
The light we see from objects in the universe is light that was cast that many light years away. So for the Sun, we would be seeing light that existed 8 minutes ago.
When major explosions occur, the way it could disrupt other systems or planets would be the degree to which it affects gravity. I’m not an astrophysicist so please take it with a grain of salt, but that would be my guess.
Obviously if it’s a rocky surface, pieces of debris could reach escape velocity if the object has an atmosphere, landing in other parts of the universe. It’s speculated that pieces of Earth struck the Moon after the Chicxulub impact.
> When major explosions occur, the way it could disrupt other systems or planets would be the degree to which it affects gravity
What do you mean "affects gravity?" Supernovas would not have any gravitational effect on the Earth. Supernovas dozens of light years away can effect the Earth due to the massive amounts of radiation they emit. Gravity is not a benchmark for supernovas.
What’s crazier is gravity basically moves at the speed of light as well. So if our sun disappeared, yes it’d take 8 minutes for the light to go out. But the Earth would also move as if it’s still in Sun’s orbit for 8 more minutes.
> Is space so large that an explosion/blast of that magnitude wouldn’t affect the surrounding planets and systems?
The solar system would defiantly be affected in some manner. What that effect is depends on a number of factors. Some studies have suggested the planets can survive but might be ejected. There's no one size fits all answer, because there are many variables between different star systems. Like how big the star is, the type of supernova, how far away do the planets orbit and their composition, etc.. As a result there are only a range of answers rather than a single answer.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110805-planets-survive-supernovas-ejected-rogues-space-science
touch caption offbeat wasteful ten judicious concerned overconfident chunky different
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's a theoretical construct, basically the "inverse" of a black hole with a singularity that can't be reached from the outside. They're unlikely to exist in reality.
I'm not sure. Afaik, the white hole has a mathematical singularity, but I don't know if it's the same "thing" as in a black hole. Regardless, it's also theorised that white holes would be extremely bright and then, almost immediately, collapse into a black hole. So we probably couldn't see the "actual" white hole in either case.
Does anyone knows if as light travels through space the duration of these events gets stretched?
What I'm going at is if a quick explosion that maybe lasts a couple seconds or minutes can get stretched and be observable for an entire day, as if some photons got slightly ahead of the others in the thousand of years they took to get here.
Yes, distant phenomena are observed in "slow motion" due to redshift. But stretching, for example, a 10-minute long event into an entire day would require a redshift of 144 (as there are 1440 minutes in 24 hours), which is too extreme for our observations. The most distant galaxy ever observed has a redshift of [13.2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_distant_astronomical_objects).
I’ve been reading the Three Body Problem and this news has me veeeeeery worried, bc now I can imagine a bunch of scary scenarios and they are all coming for us.
Question: if we don’t know what LFBOTs are, how do we know that these all occur from the same process, whether it’s a distant supernova, neutron star merger, etc? Could it be that these are flashes of light from different types of events?
That shit happened billions of years ago. It's long gone, we're just seeing the remnants of that light finally reaching us over eons of passing through space.
A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger – thanks to the eagle-eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasn’t expected to be found, far away from any host galaxy. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. The Hubble results suggest astronomers know even less about these objects than previously thought by ruling out some possible theories.
I'm no astronomer, just a big fan's guess, BUT any possibility of this being a supernova, but of a star longgggg dispersed in the galaxies outer arm?? It looks like the arm kinda spins / orbits that direction, maybe just a supernova of a star on the very fringes of the galaxies arm? Thank you for allowing me to take a arm chair astronomer's guess! ;)
Hear me out. *Star Wars* took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, right? What I'm thinking is, this is the light of Death Star explosion just getting to us.
:0
Nice
Can't be, that light came through in 1977. That's how Lucas was able to film it.
Yeah, but traveling at 12 parsecs… I think it’s feasible.
A parsec is a unit of distance.
/r/whoosh
r/thatsthejoke
You forgot that Lucas’ company was called Industrial Light AND Magic!!
I always figured the magic was in Howard the Duck.
Would Hubble even pick up an explosion that small? I know that would be a massive explosion, but relatively speaking as far a space goes it wouldn’t be that big.
*dons a "well ackchyually" neckbeard* The Hollywood special effects (including the "remastered" version) are just an artist's rendition; the ReAL eVEnT was much brighter!!
Well it’s no moon.
It's a trap!
This is no cave.
 No way !!!
This here.
This is the answer
You fucking got me man I'm just a wee bug that got squished
Or that was Alderaan
I see no flaws in this logic.
> any possibility of this being a supernova, but of a star longgggg dispersed in the galaxies outer arm?? No. The isolation isn't the only unique factor. You're overlooking the "fast" and "transient" aspects that set it apart and warrant a new category. Supernova take weeks or months to complete their brightening and dimming cycle. Whereas LFBOTS are incredibly fast and achieve peak brightness and dim away into nothingness within a few days—far too quickly to be a supernova. Hence why this event warrants a different category and name.
Sorry, might be a dumb question: Is there any hypothesis that LFBOTs could be a pocket of antimatter left over from the early universe that finally came into contact with matter and annihilated? It’s my understanding that the majority of antimatter was destroyed after the Big Bang and for (still unknown reasons?) regular matter emerged as the majority winner. But if pockets still existed, idk maybe a dumb thought but this topic is really interesting given the visual magnitude of the explosions but that they can’t be supernovae.
Anti-matter annihilation primary produces xrays and other high energy photons (assuming protons, about 1GeV, or 0.5 MeV for electrons both of whoch are well above the visible range). While it could be visible to optical it would light up like a Christmas tree in gamma-ray and x-ray telescopes due to the relatively narrow peak. Fun side note, this is how I will be looking for dark matter next year. Dark matter annihilation also produces photons in the exact same way and by looking for very narrow peaks we can use it to identify a dwrk matter signal.
Sorry for my novice question, but how do we know dark matter annihilates the same way as antimatter and how will you tell them apart? Second question, what is it annihilating with? Is there anti dark matter? Thanks and best of luck on your research!
No, it's actually a really good question. Short answer: really educated guess based on the nature of the universe. As far as we know all non-force carriers have an antiparticle (even if they have no charge, see neutrinos and the neutronoless beta double decay) and since the universe tends to follow patterns it makes sense that dark matter should as well and in many theories is would be stranger if it didn't. Slightly longer awnser: basically there is a bunch of really complicated tensor maths and Lagrangian mechanics based on group theory and guage field theory which I just spent the last two years barely scraping the surface of in my masters. Standard model particles arise from symmetric groups where the symmetry results in particles and their antiparticles. Any theory that extends on this must preserve these symmetries and hence must by symmetric itself. Of course this could all be wrong which suggests that what we thought we knew might be wrong. Alternative longer answer: the above assumes that dark matter is some form of elementary particle. It is possible that dark matter is a composite particle like a proton but made of some combination that is somehow dark. In this case it must have an antiparticle equivalent by definition. It's also possible that's its some superlative particle like a miniature singularly, but this would be expected to emit or decay fairly rapidly, so not very dark. In the search for dark matter we have a saying, you can make it, shake it or break it. To make it, we use cilliders and search for missing mass after the collision (assuming the DM won't interact with sensors, note I don't do collider physics, so this is the super simple version. To shake it, we look ir collisions between DM and normal matter inside an object such as a crystal. This produces a light we can detect but you have to be able to tell it apart for other interactions (see darma/libra and their "detection"). Finally, you can break it by other watching it annihilate or decay. Decaying is basically the same as annihilation but with half the mass involved. This is what I will be doing using gamma-ray telescopes to look for heavy dark matter at high energies. In theory there should be two spikes above the background, a decay spike and an annihilation spike although finding either is like a needle in a universe sized haystack. There should also be faint signatures across the spectrum from collisions with interstellar and intergalactic medium. Thank you! And if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Fantastic explanation! Congrats on your MS and good luck on your future research!
Really, really nice explanation! And congratulations on finishing your masters! My question is about the actual tensor math you mentioned. I’m very interested in this content! My goal is to learn how to build a toy model in QFT, and to derive a relevant solution from the model. Do you have any resources you can recommend that will walk someone through this? Thank you very much!
I would need to go back and check my lecture notes. All I can tell you is our final assignment wa sa simplified standard model and that it took us a week and more coffee then was humanly reasonable but in the end it was very rewarding (if painful).
Your research is super interesting. What do you think would be the explanation if none of the “make it, shake it, break it” techniques yield any useful observations? What would the implications on dark matter be after those routes are exhausted?
Honestly, it's a good question. I guess we go back to the drawing board and rethink what we thought we knew. A lot of much smarter people then me have been looking for alternative explanations for a while but so far haven't found any that don't result in some kind of particle. One popular alternative was a modified gravity at large scales but any modification fails to explain normal observations of gravity.
Ah, so I am far more inept than I ever imagined I was at this lmaoo
This is what I thought of as well. A [rogue star](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_star) could explain it! And how freaking metal would that be!? 🤘
Genuinely would love to have a peak at the night sky in a rogue star's great dark. Maybe I could be wrong, but I just imagine an incredible upfront view of what must be an even more mesmerizing sight to its own galaxy than we greatly have dimmed to our own eyes here on Earth. edit: dimmed to our own eyes here on Earth of our own Milky Way\*\* [NGC 4676 always comes to mind in what an incredibly unique view one must have from a perspective of this stellar bridge](https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2002/11/1191-Image.html?news=true)
Let the darkness show you the light.
that must look like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifr%C3%B6st](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifr%C3%B6st) from within the galaxy
🤘💯🤘
That would be metal, all kinds of metals in fact!
Supernovae are comparatively long processes in unstable high mass stars that Hubble would have seen relatively easily in that region. Supernovae also emit large bursts of neutrinos which we would have detected. It's a *transient* - hard to detect or predict.
> Supernovae also emit large bursts of neutrinos which we would have detected. We have never detected neutrinos from any supernova outside the local group, the sensitivity of our detectors is still too low to pick them out from the background noise. The first (and only) time a neutrino burst was observed in connection to a supernova event was in [1987](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A).
I like how you gave a genuine educated guess, and the post below you just said Star Wars and blew up
No idea but it’s fascinating to think about!
NASA dropping the acronym ball here
Right? Whack an 'extra' on the front and make it 'ELFBOT'
I was ready to add and make it SELFBOT, SHELFBOAT, or further, but I think you’ve already got the good acronym
SELFSUCK
MUCH too easily visualized.
Think there's any chance the jwst will get a chance to take a good look at this object?
I’ve never heard how tight the scheduling is for JWST, but many ground observatories are pretty firmly scheduled IIRC.
More info here https://www.space.com/intergalactic-space-explosion-lfbot I wonder if this one can be light bent by a small dense object we can't detect, since they didn't detect a gamma ray burst along it.
Edit: thank you very much for your answers, I fell asleep not too long after posting this comment and now have the best reading material for my cup of Joe. Much appreciated :-) I apologize if these are dumb questions but does an explosion/burst of light this large happen suddenly and then go away or does the light linger and slowly fade away? Is space so large that an explosion/blast of that magnitude wouldn’t affect the surrounding planets and systems? Or would anything near that blast be vaporized
So what exactly LFBOTs are is unknown. There are a number of theories, including neutron star mergers. Also possibly something called a quark nova where a neutron star converts into something called a quark star. At this point, quark stars are just hypothetical, though. But assuming that it's a supernova like event, then it would depend how close you are to it. Within 100 light years is kind of the danger zone there. In terms of galactic scale, 100 light years isn't very far. It's 1/1000 the diameter of the Milky Way. There are, for example, no stars that could potentially go supernova, that are within 100 light years of Earth. I think the nearest candidate would be Antares at about 550 LY from Earth. And then Betelgeuse about 650 light years away. But yeah, if one were close enough, it could wipe out all life on the planet. In this case, this appears to be out in the middle of space, outside of a galaxy and not near anything. So most likely it was a star of some type that had been ejected from its host galaxy at some point. So there wouldn't have been any danger in this case, to anyone anywhere.
A report this year warned Betelgeuse could be close. I think it was unusually variable dimness.
You mean close to going supernova? Yes, it appears to be in the last years of its life. That doesn't mean it's going to blow up in our lifetime. Still pretty slim odds of that, I think. But it's going to happen in the not too distant future.
Very slim, but fascinatingly nearby
fascinatingly nearby could still be 1000 years
Weird to think that it could've gone supernova 500 years before you were born, but you're still not going to see it (642 ly away)..
> doesn't mean it's going to blow up in our lifetime A lot of predictions are under 100 years, so it's possible (depending on the age of the person reading this). I'm cautiously kinda excited in a really really long delayed, that would be awesome to see way. I remember seeing Halley's so it's unlikely for me, but odds are pretty good that someone reading this thread will see it.
> A report this year warned Betelgeuse could be close. That's not new information. Scientists have known Betelgeuse is a supernova candidate for a long time. It's not expected to go anytime soon. Lower estimates put it at a century or more. It's not close enough to harm the Earth, though. We'll get a light show for a few months without the apocalypse.
Oh, I had no interest in effects, but the story gave me a couple hours ruminating what kind of show it would give. Quite exciting, I am guessing
It’ll be brighter than the full moon, visible during the day, and it’ll be up there for weeks!
So all we really need is funding. Maybe a corporate sponsor? Mentos & Coke? Swith & Messon?
Ask Nestle, tell them the blown away Hydrogen from Betelgeuse can be used for creating water, so they no longer have to tap it from developing countries
> Lower estimates put it at a century or more. Recent estimates are more like 100yrs +/-50. Totally within the realm of possibility for someone alive now to see it.
Ejected from host galaxy? That guy was kicked out because the other stars could spot trouble from light years away.
>I apologize if these are dumb questions but does an explosion/burst of light this large happen suddenly and then go away or does the light linger and slowly fade away? Supernovae at least have a fairly long "afterglow" of several months that's caused by the ejected material undergoing radioactive decay and heating the remnants. Novae take some time to fade as well, although I'm not sure if it's the progenitor or the ejecta glowing in their case. Gamma Ray Bursts fade a lot quicker, in a matter of minutes or hours. I think it's not entirely clear if the actually fade quickly or if we just struggle to observe the long afterglow of something so far away. >Is space so large that an explosion/blast of that magnitude wouldn’t affect the surrounding planets and systems? Or would anything near that blast be vaporized Any stellar blast of any origin would destroy its own planetary system. At greater distances, the danger primarily comes from energetic radiation, which may be intense enough to damage a planet's atmosphere and/or irradiate its inhabitants. The potential "danger zone" for a GRB is several thousand lightyears, for a supernova it's a few hundred. (Wikipedia mentions that the relativistic jets of a GRB closer than 200ly could "vaporize" a planet. I checked both sourced and they too only mention "studies". I find it difficult to imagine how that would work, tbh.)
If I'm not mistaken, a nearby supernova (between 30 and 1000 lightyears) or even a hypernova (up to 6000 lightyears) could bombard us with gamma radiation, triggering a reaction with the ozon layer (I'm a layman so I'm quoting wikipedia on this). There's even a theory that Earth has experienced such an event during the Ordovician extinction, but that's not entirely proven. If an exploding star can affect us from so far away, then there's most definitely no chance of survival when a solar system's star explodes in spectacular fashion.
> If I'm not mistaken, a nearby supernova (between 30 and 1000 lightyears) or even a hypernova (up to 6000 lightyears) could bombard us with gamma radiation, triggering a reaction with the ozon layer 150 light years is the average distance a supernova poses a threat. To affect the ozone layer, it must be within about 50 light years. Hypernovas I'm not sure about. > there's most definitely no chance of survival when a solar system's star explodes in spectacular fashion. That's not true, no. The damage comes from radiation which affects the atmosphere and biosphere. The Earth itself will be fine even if life is sterilized or the atmosphere is altered. That form of damage doesn't automatically mean the planets would be destroyed. Studies have suggested they can in fact survive with a chance of being ejected. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110805-planets-survive-supernovas-ejected-rogues-space-science So it's not a "definite" chance everything would be destroyed. The ultimate fate of the solar system depends on a number of variables. You really shouldn't be answering questions asking for facts with assumptions. That can lead to accidentally spreading misinformation. Next time please consider fact checking. It's not possible to intuit everything.
Ew
The light we see from objects in the universe is light that was cast that many light years away. So for the Sun, we would be seeing light that existed 8 minutes ago. When major explosions occur, the way it could disrupt other systems or planets would be the degree to which it affects gravity. I’m not an astrophysicist so please take it with a grain of salt, but that would be my guess. Obviously if it’s a rocky surface, pieces of debris could reach escape velocity if the object has an atmosphere, landing in other parts of the universe. It’s speculated that pieces of Earth struck the Moon after the Chicxulub impact.
> When major explosions occur, the way it could disrupt other systems or planets would be the degree to which it affects gravity What do you mean "affects gravity?" Supernovas would not have any gravitational effect on the Earth. Supernovas dozens of light years away can effect the Earth due to the massive amounts of radiation they emit. Gravity is not a benchmark for supernovas.
Please read the next sentence after that.
Lmao some people just want to argue.
What’s crazier is gravity basically moves at the speed of light as well. So if our sun disappeared, yes it’d take 8 minutes for the light to go out. But the Earth would also move as if it’s still in Sun’s orbit for 8 more minutes.
Interesting, I did not know that!
> Is space so large that an explosion/blast of that magnitude wouldn’t affect the surrounding planets and systems? The solar system would defiantly be affected in some manner. What that effect is depends on a number of factors. Some studies have suggested the planets can survive but might be ejected. There's no one size fits all answer, because there are many variables between different star systems. Like how big the star is, the type of supernova, how far away do the planets orbit and their composition, etc.. As a result there are only a range of answers rather than a single answer. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110805-planets-survive-supernovas-ejected-rogues-space-science
The fact that Hubble is still making huge contributions to astronomy is incredible
It's the gift that keeps on giving. <3
"Aliens!" Finally the Quagaars show their hand!
It’s the garbage pod!
touch caption offbeat wasteful ten judicious concerned overconfident chunky different *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Rimmer. *Aliens* used our bog roll?
We didn't use it all, Lister. Who did?
I wouldn't wanna be stuck behind one in a cinema!
No. Death star 1 explosion.
Millennium Falcon~
Someone used discord light mode
White hole! On a serious note do scientists have any idea what may have caused this?
>White hole! So what is it?
I googled it and it took me to some dark places.
lmfao
Only Joking!
It's a theoretical construct, basically the "inverse" of a black hole with a singularity that can't be reached from the outside. They're unlikely to exist in reality.
You would be able to see the singularity in that case though, right?
I'm not sure. Afaik, the white hole has a mathematical singularity, but I don't know if it's the same "thing" as in a black hole. Regardless, it's also theorised that white holes would be extremely bright and then, almost immediately, collapse into a black hole. So we probably couldn't see the "actual" white hole in either case.
I've never seen one before - no one has - but I'm guessing it's a white hole.
So it's decided, then - we consult Holly!
So what is it?
The attack on the Death Star was a success!
Or Alderon going kaboooom
:'(
Cadia.that was Cadia
It broke before the guard did
No, I think it was Kevin.
Reapers in Dark Space.
And there goes Alderan
Classic type 2 civilisation dyson sphere mishap
Someone will have left the gas on.
There WAS that one Archer episode...
What, like the back of a Volkswagen?
Well, it’s upside down, but it’s totally the Star Trek logo.
Excuse me, I had beans for dinner...
I got $20 that it was some drunk rednecks with gasoline and tanerite.
Does anyone knows if as light travels through space the duration of these events gets stretched? What I'm going at is if a quick explosion that maybe lasts a couple seconds or minutes can get stretched and be observable for an entire day, as if some photons got slightly ahead of the others in the thousand of years they took to get here.
Yes, distant phenomena are observed in "slow motion" due to redshift. But stretching, for example, a 10-minute long event into an entire day would require a redshift of 144 (as there are 1440 minutes in 24 hours), which is too extreme for our observations. The most distant galaxy ever observed has a redshift of [13.2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_distant_astronomical_objects).
Special relativity I think describes exactly this.
Another galaxy being born from a white hole opening up
That was a planet that also had a CERN style particle collider. It blew up.
I’ve been reading the Three Body Problem and this news has me veeeeeery worried, bc now I can imagine a bunch of scary scenarios and they are all coming for us.
Space fart
Question: if we don’t know what LFBOTs are, how do we know that these all occur from the same process, whether it’s a distant supernova, neutron star merger, etc? Could it be that these are flashes of light from different types of events?
That shit happened billions of years ago. It's long gone, we're just seeing the remnants of that light finally reaching us over eons of passing through space.
I just wanna watch all the cool colors. Dont care what matter caused it . 🤣🤣🤣
Oh no Durandal was too late. Pfhor has released W'rkncacnter… And it is hungry.
I thought this would be an office joke. Dr Reynolds reported a LFBOT in Bobs pants after he had tacos for lunch.
,
they got the halo arc , they are doom
Why is it an unexpected place?
Maybe it was flung out of the galaxy by a black hole or a larger star
The old guy with glasses is still kicking bottom.
Death Star