NASA PAO in full swing again

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0502/19grb/

A gamma ray flare 50,000 LYs away.
If it had been 10 LYs away it could have destroyed much of the ozone layer.
A quote:
' "Astronomically speaking, this explosion happened in our backyard. If
it were in our living room, we'd be in big trouble!" said Bryan Gaensler
(Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), lead author on a paper
describing radio observations of the event.'
If your backyard is 5,000 times as far away as the other end of your
living room, you either have a very big back yard or a very small living
room.
Yup, we've got to keep an eye peeled for these things.... they emanate
from neutron stars....I wonder how close the nearest neutron star is?
Ah, here we go- it's little RX J185635-3754, presently at 200 LY
distance, expected to have it's closest approach to our solar system in
around 300,000 years at a distance of 170 LY.
So, do we have to worry about these things? Apparently not.
(What the NASA PAO should do is have a news conference in which they
repeat over and over again that what they've just found poses no threat
to Earth whatsoever, and let the CTs do the rest for them.) ;-)

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0502/19grb/

A gamma ray flare 50,000 LYs away.
If it had been 10 LYs away it could have destroyed much of the ozone layer.
A quote:
' "Astronomically speaking, this explosion happened in our backyard. If
it were in our living room, we'd be in big trouble!" said Bryan Gaensler
(Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), lead author on a paper
describing radio observations of the event.'
If your backyard is 5,000 times as far away as the other end of your
living room, you either have a very big back yard or a very small living
room.

Yes, well, quite. That sort of scale would put the size
of the backyard at tens of kilometers. Though in
astronomical terms less than 2 or 3 orders of magnitude
is often considered to be a small difference (in a lot of
ways it's a lot like usenet).


Yup, we've got to keep an eye peeled for these things.... they emanate
from neutron stars....I wonder how close the nearest neutron star is?
Ah, here we go- it's little RX J185635-3754, presently at 200 LY
distance, expected to have it's closest approach to our solar system in
around 300,000 years at a distance of 170 LY.
So, do we have to worry about these things? Apparently not.

Careful, neutron stars are not easily found. The quietest, and
oldest, neutron stars are small with relatively low visual
magnitudes. If they do not have prominant radio signatures
from pulsar related activity, and some neutron stars don't,
then they can easily slip detection even in our "backyard".
200 ly is the closest *known* neutron star, which is almost
certainly not the actual closest neutron star.

Note that RX J185635-3754 was discovered only in 1992, and
only then because it was extraordinarily bright in the x-ray
spectrum. In visible light the object is 26th magnitude,
which is very dim, significantly dimmer than anything that
would turn up on any whole sky surveys planned for the near
future.

Fortunately though, less easily spotted neutron stars are
also less likely to represent a threat to Earth.

Christopher M. Jones wrote:


Yes, well, quite. That sort of scale would put the size
of the backyard at tens of kilometers. Though in
astronomical terms less than 2 or 3 orders of magnitude
is often considered to be a small difference (in a lot of
ways it's a lot like usenet).


That was still a very poor choice of words and analogy on his part.
I do like the exclamation point; more scientific reporting needs
exclamation points!
Let's! Make! Science! Exciting!
"Look at it this way...picture the Sun as your brain, and this gamma ray
burst as a cosmic orgasm; now as long as it happens in your groin, it's
okay... but imagine what would occur if it happened in your nasal
sinuses sometime- that would be some sneeze wouldn't it? You'd be lucky
to survive a sneeze like that! And that's why we study things like this;
to make sure that all powerful events in the cosmos stay in an
appropriate place for them, and don't threaten our lives in unexpected ways.
And now my colleague will discuss new findings regarding Io's volcanos."
"You may occasionally think that you have really bad heartburn; but if
your stomach were Jupiter's moon Io..."



Fortunately though, less easily spotted neutron stars are
also less likely to represent a threat to Earth.



"Now picture a small hard-to-detect neutron star as similar to a small
bladder stone; it may be a worry, but in all likelihood it will pass.
Now picture a bladder stone the size of a basketball and full of
nitroglycerine; this you could detect, but what would you do then?
That's why we do research like this- to make sure we know what to do if
a bladder stone the size of a basketball and full of nitroglycerine
shows up in our celestial neighborhood someday."

Pat

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote in message
...

Yes, well, quite. That sort of scale would put the size
of the backyard at tens of kilometers.

In Australia, it could be

Neil Gerace wrote...
Christopher M. Jones wrote...

Yes, well, quite. That sort of scale would put the size
of the backyard at tens of kilometers.

In Australia, it could be

And if you live in Woomera add another couple of zeros

- Peter

"Pat Flannery" wrote ...
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0502/19grb/

A gamma ray flare 50,000 LYs away.
If it had been 10 LYs away it could have destroyed much of the ozone layer.
A quote:
' "Astronomically speaking, this explosion happened in our backyard. If
it were in our living room, we'd be in big trouble!" said Bryan Gaensler
(Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), lead author on a paper
describing radio observations of the event.'
If your backyard is 5,000 times as far away as the other end of your
living room, you either have a very big back yard or a very small living
room.
Yup, we've got to keep an eye peeled for these things.... they emanate
from neutron stars....I wonder how close the nearest neutron star is?
Ah, here we go- it's little RX J185635-3754, presently at 200 LY
distance, expected to have it's closest approach to our solar system in
around 300,000 years at a distance of 170 LY.
So, do we have to worry about these things?

Ask the dinosaurs*.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4198
Actually I think what's postulated in that article is an altogether different
event - but it's close enough for horse shoes.

* OK, "ask the brachiopod species of the late Ordovician period,"
but "ask the dinosaurs" sounds better. :-P

Pat Flannery wrote:
That was still a very poor choice of words and analogy on his part.
I do like the exclamation point; more scientific reporting needs
exclamation points!
Let's! Make! Science! Exciting!
[snipped, for the sake of innocent keyboards everywhere]

I almost forgot to mention how hilarious your send up was,
and quite on the money with regard to the silly overreach
of PAO flacks everywhere.

Christopher M. Jones wrote:


I almost forgot to mention how hilarious your send up was,
and quite on the money with regard to the silly overreach
of PAO flacks everywhere.


Yeah, but how much do you have to pay these guys to write **** like that
without blinking an eye?
I mean, you'd think they would all be in fear of losing their eyesight
from "A Christmas Story's" soap poisoning.

Pat

On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 02:27:22 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

I mean, you'd think they would all be in fear of losing their eyesight
from "A Christmas Story's" soap poisoning.

....If that film is never aired again, and all copies - master, legal
*and* bootleg - are dropped into the Sun, it wouldn't be too soon for
me. It's the one holiday film that I've never liked, probably because
HBO ran the damn thing a whopping 72 times the December they got the
rights to it, and IIRC The Inbred Network - aka TNT - ran the piece of
**** for 24 hours straight! Hard to believe Bob Clark could have come
up with a classic like "Porky's" and then followed it with this piece
of ****.

Darren McGavin should have had his balls cut off for agreeing to
prostitute himself into doing this film...

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

OM wrote:



I mean, you'd think they would all be in fear of losing their eyesight


from "A Christmas Story's" soap poisoning.

...If that film is never aired again, and all copies - master, legal
*and* bootleg - are dropped into the Sun, it wouldn't be too soon for
me.



It's one of my favorite movies.
You just never stuck your tongue to something in winter- I stuck mine to
the city's Court House iron fence. And I had a BB rifle as a child. And
I shot my front tooth out with a ricocheting BB. And my mother always
thought the furnace was malfunctioning. And I got my mouth washed out
with soap once. And dad would haggle with the Christmas Tree salesman.
And the tree would shed needles every single year. And guess what Major
Award is sitting next to my living room chair at this very moment? :-)

Pat