Science channel gamma ray bursts, cosmos, questions

[newtonian]

Today on the science channel 3 very interesting programs on astronomy are being repeated.<br /><br />Death Star deals with the discovery of gamma ray bursts and their cause. The cause considered most likely is a beam of gamma rays from a hypernova from a massive black hole billons of light years away - typically about 10 billion light years away.<br /><br />The broadcast goes through the history of discoveries concerning these bursts, and finally the analysis of spectrums of afterglows of these bursts as they light up gasses and dust in the area in between us and them.<br /><br />The red shifts in these afterglows indicate billions of light years away.<br /><br />My question: Is this still the popular model? Are there other plausible explanations for these bursts linked with times soon after the origin of our universe? [The program was originally aired in 2004]<br /><br />And what is the most current consensus of details about quasars, also dealt with in the Cosmos episode aired today on the Science channel?<br /><br />On Cosmos, Carl Sagan eloquently explores thge mysteries of our universe, adding interesting Hindu beliefs including an 8.6 billion year day of Brahma [the Creator]. Carl Sagan considers this to be a coincidental point of harmony with modern astronomy - I never assume coincidences. {I can explain my educated guess on the reason if any of you ask.}<br /><br />Next is Complete Cosmos which is on right now, concerning galaxy formation, black holes and the Big Bang theory - no comment yet - I am just watching it now!

 

[newtonian]

Some notes and questions:<br /><br />Complete Cosmos, Science channel, midnight CST 11/23/05, originally aired 2005.<br /><br />Will discuss galaxy formation, black holes, big bang theory.<br /><br />Sun revolves around Milky Way every 225 million years. The old estimate was 250 million years.<br /><br />Milky Way has 50 billion stars or 100 billion stars.<br /><br />Barnard’s star, a red dwarf, is heading towards the sun and will be the closest star for a while.<br /><br />Beautiful photos.<br /><br />Red nebulae such as the rosette nebula are shown.<br /><br />Antares is so huge it leaks into space.<br /><br />A dwarf is a smoke ring, including a butterfly, awesome. The Helix nebula.<br /><br />A repeating Nova from a binary cycle.<br /><br />The pulsar in the Crab nebula from the supernova of 1054, time lapse photo of Crab showing the motion, and a jet also depicted.<br /><br />Eta Corena with beautiful nebula may go supernova..<br /><br />Silver Coin galaxy, 10 million ly<br /><br />M83, 10 million ly away<br /><br />Sombrero, 40 million ly<br /><br />Virgo cluster, 60 million ly, 1,000 galaxies.<br /><br />We are part of super cluster, computer simulation of appearance.<br /><br />Cepheid variables used as standard candles to gauge distance.<br /><br />Andromeda, 2.2 million ly distance Cepheid method.<br /><br />Hubble allows this method to about 80 million ly.<br /><br />Then type I supernova method is used as standard candle for long distance to nearly 1 billion ly???<br /><br />Then comes red shift for further distances, suggesting up to 15 billion ly.<br /><br />Sources of great signals, quasars the strongest, powered by super massive black holes?<br /><br />Colliding galaxies, the antanae galaxy, computer simulation of merger, triggering starbursts of new stars at center.<br /><br />Cartwheel galaxy is the result of a now nearby galaxy passing through and leaving but disrupting the larger Cartwheel galaxy (as above, photos shown, and computer simulations shown)<br /><br />In 10 billion years we collide

 

[eric2006]

whoooaaaa!! That was a lot of typing. Your fingers must have blisters <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />I saw those shows also. <br /><br />Dr. Sagan was an interesting man. I love his pronunciations. Was he the voice on Rocky and Bullwinkle?? j/k<br /><br />Those huge Gamma ray bursts are amazing! An insane amount of energy indeed. I see how hard it was not to toss E=mc2. It just goes to show. Investigate, investigate, investigate.<br /><br />What was even more wonderful was those super massive stars that died very fast fueling the material. Can you re-cap what they had to do with the quasars and the gamma-ray bursts???

 

[nexium]

An interesting, but unlikely explanation is that ET space craft traveling at about 0.99 c produce a very narrow beam of gamma rays in a manner some what like a sonic boom, as they collide with the rare particles in intersteller space. The gamma rays are red shifted, not becase the ET craft is very far away, but because the ET craft is moving about 0.99 c with respect to the intersteller medium. Please refute, comment and/or embellish. Neil

 

[newtonian]

Neil - If by ET you mean an extraterrestrial black hole birth, I would tend to agree!<br /><br />The December, 2002 Scientific American article entitled "The brightest explosions in the Universe" details evidence that gamma ray bursts signal the birth of black holes.<br /><br />I have not studied the article yet.<br /><br />Curiously, the awesome illustration at the beginning of the article almost looks like a huge flying saucer with a huge energy ray (the gamma ray burst) comming from beneath its center!<br /><br />Truth can be stranger than fiction!