TECH NOTES

Hubble Finds Unidentified Object in Space, Scientists Puzzled

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This is exactly why we send astronauts to risk their life to service Hubble: in a paper published last week in the Astrophysical Journal, scientists detail the discovery of a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know about you, but when a research paper conclusion says “We suggest that the transient may be one of a new class” I get a chill of oooh-aaahness down my spine. Especially when after a hundred days of observation, it disappeared from the sky with no explanation. Get your tinfoil hats out, because it gets even weirder.

The object also appeared out of nowhere. It just wasn’t there before. In fact, they don’t even know where it is exactly located because it didn’t behave like anything they know. Apparently, it can’t be closer than 130 light-years but it can be as far as 11 billion light-years away. It’s not in any known galaxy either. And they have ruled out a supernova too. It’s something that they have never encountered before. In other words: they don’t have a single clue about where or what the heck this thing is.

The shape of the light curve is inconsistent with microlensing. In addition to being inconsistent with all known supernova types, is not matched to any spectrum in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database.

The only thing the astronomers—working on the Supernova Cosmology Project—can tell is that it appeared all of the sudden in the direction of a cluster with the catchy name of CL 1432.5+3332.8, about 8.2 billion light-years away. Hubble caught a spark that continued to brighten during a 100-day period, peaking at the 21st magnitude, only to fade away in the same period of time.

Apparently, a scientist at the LHC declared that the object is similar to the flash that an Imperial Star Destroyer does when reaching Warp 10. Either that or some dust on the Hubble lenses, so someone tell NASA to get some Windex up there too. [Sky and Telescope]

X-ray profile of Galactic Cluster 2XMM J083026+524133
Original image credit: G. Lamer et al.

Aug 29, 2008
Clusters and Cosmological Constants

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A distant cluster of galaxies is said to confirm the existence of undetectable energy. Not a single reference is made to the most powerful known force in the cosmos: electricity.

Astronomers working with the European Space Agency’s XMM Newton X-ray Telescope have discovered a grouping of galaxies in the outer most reaches of the universe containing more than 1000 times the mass of our own Milky Way. The image above is said to reflect the appearance of the cluster as it was during a relatively early epoch in the evolution of the universe.

Because the speed of light is used as a benchmark for defining cosmological distance calculations, the shifting of Fraunhofer lines into the red end of observed electromagnetic spectra determines “recessional velocity”. As standard theories dictate, the faster an object recedes from our observation platforms the further away it is because the primordial Big Bang explosion imparted an initial impulse that is causing the universe to expand. Using these theoretical parameters, a faster recessional velocity means greater distance, which means an earlier time period.

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‘Naked Eye’ Gamma Ray Burst Was Aimed Squarely At Earth

This artist’s concept shows the “naked-eye” GRB close up. Observations suggest material shot outward in a two-component jet (white and green beams). Credit: NASA/Swift/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith and John Jones

The brightest explosion ever seen was observed in March this year. Now a team of astronomers from around the world, including the University of Leicester, the Mullard Space Science Laboratory of University College London and Liverpool John Moores University, have combined their data from satellites and observatories to explain what happened.

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Distant object found orbiting Sun backwards

Jeff Hecht
NewScientist.com news service
00:35 05 September 2008

The orbit of the object 2008 KV42 is so tilted with respect to the planets that it travels backwards around the Sun. It has been nicknamed “Drac” for “Dracula”, since vampires supposedly have the power to walk on walls (Illustration: CFEPS)

An object in the icy Kuiper belt has been found orbiting the Sun backwards, compared to most other objects in the solar system. It may help explain the origin of an enigmatic family of comets typified by Comet Halley.

The new object, called 2008 KV42, lies in the Kuiper belt, a ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune. Its orbit is inclined 103.5° to the plane of the Earth’s orbit, or ecliptic. That means that as it orbits the Sun, it actually travels in the opposite direction to the planets.

Researchers led by Brett Gladman of the University of British Columbia first spotted the maverick object in May. Observations suggest it is about 50 kilometres across and travels on a path that takes it from the distance of Uranus to more than twice that of Neptune (or between 20 and 70 astronomical units from the Sun, with 1 AU being the Earth-Sun distance).

Its orbit appears to have been stable for hundreds of millions of years, but astronomers say it may have been born elsewhere. “It’s certainly intriguing to ask where it comes from,” says Brian Marsden of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Gladman says it was probably born in the same place as Halley-type comets. These comets also travel on retrograde or highly tilted orbits – lasting between 20 and 200 years, but they come closer to the Sun.

Missing link

It has been unclear where such comets come from. Computer models suggest they do not arise in either of the two birthplaces of other types of comets – the Kuiper belt or the much more distant Oort cloud, a shell of of icy bodies lying between 20,000 and 200,000 AU from the Sun.

Gladman’s team calculates that 2008 KV42 arises beyond the Kuiper belt but closer than the Oort cloud, in a region thought to lie between 2000 to 5000 AU from the Sun. Some astronomers call the zone the inner Oort cloud.

A gravitational disturbance likely kicked 2008 KV42 out of the inner Oort cloud and to its present orbit. And Gladman says it might one day be pushed out of that orbit and into one that brings it closer to the Sun, making it a possible “transition object” on its way to becoming a Halley-type comet.

Gladman’s team has found more than 20 other Kuiper belt objects with steeply inclined orbits while surveying the sky well away from the ecliptic – but no others with a retrograde orbit.

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Fermilab physicists discover “doubly strange” particle

Batavia, Ill.—Physicists of the DZero experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a new particle made of three quarks, the Omega-sub-b (Ωb). The particle contains two strange quarks and a bottom quark (s-s-b). It is an exotic relative of the much more common proton and weighs about six times the proton mass.

The discovery of the doubly strange particle brings scientists a step closer to understanding exactly how quarks form matter and to completing the “periodic table of baryons.” Baryons (derived from the Greek word “barys,” meaning “heavy”) are particles that contain three quarks, the basic building blocks of matter. The proton comprises two up quarks and a down quark (u-u-d).

Combing through almost 100 trillion collision events produced by the Tevatron particle collider at Fermilab, the DZero collaboration found 18 incidents in which the particles emerging from a proton-antiproton collision revealed the distinctive signature of the Omega-sub-b. Once produced, the Omega-sub-b travels about a millimeter before it disintegrates into lighter particles. Its decay, mediated by the weak force, occurs in about a trillionth of a second.

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