A Star is Unborn

May 21, 2008 5:30 PM

“Here was an object brand new. At first we didn’t recognize it.” Dr. Alicia Soderberg on the discovery of Supernova 2008D, using the Swift satellite telescope....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth (15 comments total)

damn it, kronos, you beat me to it.
posted by nax at 5:43 PM on May 21, 2008

Wow, that is cool.
posted by sciurus at 5:50 PM on May 21, 2008

Here was an object brand new.

This is a discovery very lucky.
posted by msalt at 6:11 PM on May 21, 2008

Very awesome, it is.
posted by Mr_Zero at 6:15 PM on May 21, 2008

My people call to me. They are.
posted by DU at 6:20 PM on May 21, 2008

Brand new? It happened ninety million years ago, and they're just finding out about it now!!!

Huh. So much for any advanced warning from these bozos.
posted by yhbc at 6:25 PM on May 21, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Man, that news is 88 million years old.
posted by mattoxic at 6:26 PM on May 21, 2008

That gave me a boner. I love science.
posted by number9dream at 6:27 PM on May 21, 2008

Yeah. I heard about it on All Things Considered today. The announcer said it was the first supernova witnessed at the time of the explosion and I'm all like "huh?"

Thanks for mis-informing the public, NPR. You won't see me come Fall Pledge Drive.
posted by sourwookie at 6:28 PM on May 21, 2008

And here is a thread with a direction predictable.
posted by everichon at 6:30 PM on May 21, 2008

Brand new? It happened ninety million years ago, and they're just finding out about it now!!!

Actually, to us it is happening now. If you re-conceptualize your view of physics to include outstanding conceptual qualities of light and travel such as simultaneity and distance supercession then it is within reason that we are (can be) here and there/"far-ever" we want to be now.

It only takes a perception of light as instantaneously conduitive as opposed to merely instantaneous.

I believe John Dobson has a similar take on things, disregarded/non-traditional as it may be:

In a discussion of the speed of light,
Dobson says "it is not a speed, but the
ratio of space to time."

"Time," says
Dobson, "is nature’s way of keeping
everything from happening at once.
Space is nature’s way of keeping everything
from happening in the same place."
posted by humannaire at 7:09 PM on May 21, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

I believe that was the joke, humannaire. :) This is pretty cool.
posted by absalom at 7:18 PM on May 21, 2008

I liked its old stuff better.
posted by thecaddy at 8:59 PM on May 21, 2008

They get nucleosynthesis wrong in the end of the article - everything up to iron, inclusive, can be formed in main sequence stars. Otherwise, great post.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:09 PM on May 21, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The discovery came Jan. 7, when Berger and his fiancee, Alicia Soderberg, both 30, were using NASA's Swift spacecraft to observe an already discovered supernova in the galaxy NGC 2770.

"I just finished dinner and there was nothing interesting on the TV," Berger said. "I decided to take a quick look at the observation."

I would have made this discovery myself, but I was reading Metafilter that evening.
posted by lukemeister at 7:20 AM on May 22, 2008