[ThTh1] So this is research that I am somewhat involved in:
An unprecedentedly bright gamma-ray burst (GRB) lit up the gamma-ray sky on October 9th. The burst, cataloged as GRB 221009A, exploded in a galaxy about 2 billion light-years away — close for a GRB. Its brightness and proximity spurred astronomers worldwide to monitor the event from both ground and space.
This event likely belongs to the class of long GRBs, the end-of-life phase of an extremely rare set of massive stars. Once a massive star reaches a point in which the nuclear reactions in its core can no longer produce enough energy to support it, it collapses. If that star is rotating rapidly, the explosion releases material into space in the form of two opposite and narrow jets moving just shy of the speed of light. And if one of those jets points toward us, we see a burst of gamma rays, typically lasting for several minutes. A longer-lived fading afterglow, observable across the electromagnetic spectrum, often follows the initial burst.
GRB 221009A was so intense that it temporarily blinded multiple sensitive gamma-ray detectors in space. It’s the brightest GRB detected so far. The energy released by the burst, which researchers were able to estimate thanks to the measured distance to the burst, also puts it among the most energetic GRBs known.
The picture below was produced by my colleague Andy Beardmore from Swift data. It shows the X-rays scattering off dust grains in our own galaxy.
We detected stupidly-powerful gamma rays from this thing. The blast was so intense that, even two billion light years away, we could measure the effects on our ionosphere. In fact, it was so bright, we didn’t think it was a GRB at first. It turned out, it exploded while Swift was on the other side of the Earth. What we initially detected was the leftover explosion almost an hour after it went off.
Now this GRB does not produce any danger to us. GRBs are extremely rare and one would have be both nearby (within a few tens of thousand of light years) and pointed right at us to be dangerous. But this was the brightest burst seen in Fermi’s 14 years of looking at them. And, had we been on the right side of the Earth, it probably would have been the brightest Swift has seen in its 18 years in orbit. The universe is still surprising us. And we’re going to learn a lot from this bright bad boy.
[ThTh2] Within the cells of your body are these little organelles called mitochondria. These generate the ATP molecules that power your cells. What’s interesting is that their own genome. It’s generally accepted that, at some early point in our evolution, mitochondria fused with our cells and became symbiotic. The genome within is inherited only from your mother as the sperm cell’s mitochondria are thrown away. A few years ago, however, it was found that some people have some paternal mitochondrial DNA, which was baffling.
We may now have an explanation. It looks like, occasionally, some mitochondrial DNA gets incorporated into the nuclear DNA. It may be particularly likely to happen when DNA is damaged and the mitochondrial DNA fills the gap like a bandaid. In other words, your mom’s cells may be fixing your DNA boo-boos.
[ThTh3] You may have heard this week that snow crab populations have collapsed and Alaska has called off the hunting season. Is it climate change? Probably, but there’s a lot more to it.
[ThTh4] Sometimes black holes burp.
[ThTh5] This is more or less accurate. Jupiter has a whole system orbiting it.
Jupiter has 80 known moons in a wide range of sizes and shapes. This video compares their size using Manhattan, NYC and part of the New York state as a reference
[full video, HD, MetaBallStudios: https://t.co/nIz0Yp3nuP] pic.twitter.com/pPq5qUTyGF
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 9, 2022
[ThTh6] If we’re going to get to a carbon-free future, we’re going to need a serious revolution in battery tech. Our current batteries are not the kind of thing that’s sustainable on a global scale. NASA may be making some breakthroughs on that. If solid-state batteries work out, it would be the biggest revolution in the tech in a century.
[ThTh7] Today in bad headlines. No nitrous oxide doesn’t prove there are drug-doing aliens out there. It may, however, be a biosignature for some form of extraterrestrial life.
[ThTh8] And in yet more bad headlines … ah, they changed it, thankfully. CNN’s initial headline said colonoscopies don’t work to prevent colon cancer. And, indeed the study they cite showed they don’t work … for people who don’t get them. For people who do, it cuts the risk of cancer by 30% and the chance of colon cancer death by 50%. So, yeah, if you’re over 50, let them put the tube up your butt. I’ve done it. You’re asleep so you don’t even notice.
[ThTh9] We’ve known for a long time that the moon formed from the debris scattered outward when the primordial Earth was hit by a Mars-sized planetoid. But new simulations show that process may have taken mere hours.
[ThTh10] The replication crisis is real, although it varies a lot by discipline.
[ThTh11] And let’s close out this week with yet another JWST image that will blow your socks off.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI).
ThTh7: Does this demonstrate that aliens have not surpassed 1970’s dentistry?Report
“In fact, it was so bright, we didn’t think it was a GRB at first. It turned out, it exploded while Swift was on the other side of the Earth. What we initially detected was the leftover explosion almost an hour after it went off.”
I realize this will ring pedantic though I’m genuinely trying to understand how all this works when we’re talking about such massive distances.
As this thing was 2B light years away, realistically this explosion happened 2B+ years ago, correct? And we’re just now seeing the effects of it now that the light has had time enough to travel into our observable range? So Swift wasn’t merely on the other side of the Earth… Swift didn’t even exist nor did humans or most of life on Earth when this thing ACTUALLY went off, right? But in the 2B+ years since that happened, everything happened here and we ended up in position to capture the 2B+ year-old evidence of the explosion?
OR did this actually JUST happen and we have the technology to see things happening that far away in some degree of “real time”?
Or is that all sort of one-and-the-same for space guys? Like do they talk about things in real time in terms of what we observe and just know in the back of their minds they’re really talking about past events?Report
It happened 2 billion years ago. But we talk about it in real time as the photons reach the Earth.Report
Thank you! Sorry, I realize that is probably a dumb question but it always confuses me.Report
Not a dumb question at all.Report
Imagine that you are sitting on one of the planets around Proxima Centauri.
You have an *AMAZING* satellite dish. Or, really, a legion of satellite dishes that mimic being a really, really big satellite dish that allows you to pick up on earth’s radio signals.
You might be tempted to say something like “Oooh, Russia just knocked out Spain from the World Cup!”
Sure, that happened in July 2018. But you’re watching this on your space television and, in the bottom corner of the screen, it says “LIVE”.
You might be tempted to wander into your space kitchen and get a space beer out of the space fridge and tell your space main squeeze “hey, Spain sucks now”.
Even though, right now, that happened four years and three months ago and we’re a mere month away from the 2022 World Cup.Report
ThTh8: Kaiser’s research on their large patient base says an annual stool test is as good as an every-five-years colonoscopy if you have no prior personal or family history of colon cancer. I return the sample promptly when they send me the test kit each year.Report
Off topic but on the other thread you came out pretty hard about refusing to use PayPal… would you be willing to elaborate on the reasons why? Thanks.Report
It’s so long ago that I don’t remember the details, only that they screwed things up for long enough, and it was enough work to straighten out, that I simply refuse to do business with them.Report
ThTh6: There has been a flood of announcements on battery tech this year. Some of the solid electrolyte work has received major private sector funding for scaling up commercial production. Silicon oxide anodes. Sodium ion tech. Aluminum-sulfur chemistries that don’t have sufficient capacity per weight for EVs, but are enormously cheaper than li-ion for grid storage. California has reached about 6% of their peaking power coming from battery storage instead of natural gas.Report
Yeah batteries are the whole ballgame. If they can crack that nut I’ll actually believe widespread 100% renewable grids are possible.Report
I’m more optimistic. The only way they don’t crack the nut is if all of the promising developments fail. Timing, on the other hand, and political will to accept the conversion pain, are an entirely different matter.Report
Pessimistic, myself.
Decarbonization is where it’s at!
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/25/schools-in-england-warn-of-crisis-of-heartbreaking-rise-in-hungry-childrenReport
ThTh3:
This exemplifies how there is and never will be any environmental problem which can be attributable solely to climate change.
But instead, climate change acts as a general accellerant to make all environmental problems worse.Report
Yeah, people want to assign single causes to a given event, but natural systems are simply too complicated for that to work. Strictly speaking, climate change doesn’t make anything happen, but it contribute to almost everything.Report
There have also been years when Dungeness Crab season was eliminated or cut short because of environmental issues. In this case, toxis making them inedible to humans: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Dungeness-crab-season-nears-in-California-but-13327955.phpReport