Nasa to announce something big May 14th?

[WallRunner]

Well, the best thing so far was that first caller, IMO

From,
Chris.

 

[Omnis]

Well, the best thing so far was that first caller, IMO

From,
Chris.

Second caller, actually. I'm just going to keep listening for more prank calls.

 

[WallRunner]

Second caller, actually. I'm just going to keep listening for more prank calls.

Well, this current one is trying to turn on a voice changer, then he just went "HEY HEY I WANT TO TALK TO YOU GUYS, HEY HEY I WANT TO TALK TO YOU GUYS ABOUT FINDING A *INSERT FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE ORGAN HERE*", as they attempted to shut the phone line down.

Edit: seems to be over, but they left the mic on and you can hear people in the background.

From,
Chris.

 

[Omnis]

LOL! Wow, they must've been flooded with prank calls. The lady said, "Actually... I think the time for calls is over." and then this guy goes, "aww, F-!" He starts screaming and saying what Wallrunner so eloquently reported.

Man, I hope NASA has its audio editing ready. I knew I should've bet on prank calls.

 

[Alex.]

From what i've read in this thread, it's a 140 year old supernova?

 

[WallRunner]

Best Liveblog of the press conference I've found:
Wired Liveblog (Slight language warning)

From,
Chris.

 

[FoolKiller]

Had this not gotten hyped I would be much more interested. But instead I was looking for something spectacularly shocking and so my reaction was merely, oh.

Had I just run across this in a news story I would have been much more interested.


So, let me get this straight: Basically we missed what could have been a spectacular astronomical event because it was a bit dusty and now we get to watch the afterglow?

 

[Robin]

Told you it was going to be a major anticlimax!

 

[Danoff]

Give me 20 on supermassive black hole vomiting out a white dwarf.

I'm pretty sure you bought at the very peak for SMBH.

 

[Omnis]

I'm pretty sure you bought at the very peak for SMBH.

It's cool cuz I'm hedged on death star and moon crickets.

 

[Joey D]

Here is the article from NASA, with a photo as well!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/08-062.html

 

[TB]

If you want I can post the 23 meg tiff instead.

 

[Joey D]

As cool as that would be I think the servers would explode.

Oh and I think this is appropriate here:

 

[TB]

In that case, a crop of said tiff instead:

 

[WallRunner]

...moon crickets.

I wouldn't go spouting that around much, it's a racial slur for a black male who goes around at night.

From,
Chris.

 

[Omnis]

I wouldn't go spouting that around much, it's a racial slur for a black male who goes around at night.

From,
Chris.

Yes, I know that. I was just talking about the call and my SMBH.

Anyway, the supernova looks awesome. It's like a flaming water droplet.

 

[Touring Mars]

Told you it was going to be a major anticlimax!

It's odd how this announcement has been interpretted to be "hyped" when infact it is not that unusual for NASA to give advanced notice of announcements such as this, apparently... perhaps the blogosphere is more responsible for the "hype" rather than anyone else!

I think it is a very significant find, not least because it is provides another major benchmark in mankind's attempts to observe something fundamental to the advent of life itself. Given that supernovae are the source of higher atomic number elements and hence serve to populate the universe with elements essential for complex life (such as ourselves) to arise, I reckon NASA are fairly justified in being proud of their new find....

is there anything of particularly interesting about this announcemnent?

What makes this one special is that it is in our own galaxy... We can see "recent" supernovae events happening in other galaxies relatively frequently (since there are hundreds of billions of galaxies...) but they are so far away that we cannot possibly see the remnants of supernovae from other galaxies in any detail whatsoever... we can only see supernovae remnants in any detail that happen within our own galaxy. Our only chance of following the process of what happens when a star explodes is to either be lucky enough to be watching one when it happens (extremely unlikely) and hope we've set the video properly, or to find examples of supernovae at different stages of development after they have exploded. Before this find, the youngest supernova remnant ever found in our galaxy was about 400 years old, so this one is the closest glimpse yet at what a star looks like after it explodes. It should go some way to showing how the stuff that ends up as planets and living beings gets to be where (and how) it is...

 

[livemusic]

Looks like the Firefox logo.

 

[Alex.]

It actually bears a decent resemblance

 

[Sniffs]

ferget it... Two posts popped in while I was typing a gag to the last post I saw.

 

[TB]

It took you 10 hours to come up with this "gag"?

Edit:

 

[Touring Mars]

I think Firefox should sue, personally...

 

[Omnis]

I wonder if that will become their new logo, actually.

That or maybe they'll name it the firefox supernova. I mean, they don't actually have naming conventions, do they? Like, they just refer to things with number codes?

 

[Solid Lifters]

Since space pictures have no color, whoever selected the color choices must be a Firefox fan/user.

 

[Joey D]

Since space pictures have no color, whoever selected the color choices must be a Firefox fan/user.

Really? Guess you learn something new everyday. Why is that?

 

[livemusic]

Actually I read some news a while ago about a new star it was found and people were saying it was pretty similar to the Firefox logo:

I think it's called V838 Monocerotis.

 

[Solid Lifters]

Really? Guess you learn something new everyday. Why is that?

That I'm not 100% sure on. I watched a special about Hubble and they said all space shots are in black and white and that all color is added here on Earth.

 

[Stevisiov]

If I heard correctly this picture was scanning for electromagnetic radiation at x-ray frequency. If this is the case then yes colour is impossible from a human interpretation as the frequency of x-rays is considerably different to the frequency of light waves. At least thats what I am assume.