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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A team of astronomers led by Carnegie's Meredith MacGregor and Alycia Weinberger detected a massive stellar flare -- an energetic explosion of radiation -- from the closest star to our own Sun, Proxima Centauri, which occurred last March. This finding, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, raises questions about the habitability of our Solar System's nearest exoplanetary neighbor, Proxima b, which orbits Proxima Centauri.
MacGregor, Weinberger and their colleagues -- the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics' David Wilner and Adam Kowalski and Steven Cranmer of the University of Colorado Boulder -- discovered the enormous flare when they reanalyzed observations taken last year by Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, a radio telescope made up of 66 antennae.
At peak luminosity it was 10 times brighter than our Sun's largest flares when observed at similar wavelengths. Stellar flares have not been well studied at the wavelengths detected by ALMA, especially around stars of Proxima Centauri's type, called M dwarfs, which are the most common in our galaxy.
"March 24, 2017 was no ordinary day for Proxima Cen," said lead author MacGregor.
The flare increased Proxima Centauri's brightness by 1,000 times over 10 seconds. This was preceded by a smaller flare; taken together, the whole event lasted fewer than two minutes of the 10 hours that ALMA observed the star between January and March of last year.
[...] "It's likely that Proxima b was blasted by high energy radiation during this flare," MacGregor explained, adding that it was already known that Proxima Centauri experienced regular, although smaller, x-ray flares. "Over the billions of years since Proxima b formed, flares like this one could have evaporated any atmosphere or ocean and sterilized the surface, suggesting that habitability may involve more than just being the right distance from the host star to have liquid water."
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:37AM (11 children)
How come that we know what happened 11 months ago around a star more than 4 light-years away? Faster than light communication?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:39AM
Submitted to ApJL 2017 December 22; Accepted to ApJL 2018 February 5
https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08257 [arxiv.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:02AM (4 children)
Like all modern comms about space, you get the TAI time, and you're free to adjust for your local time zone at -4.246 years. Don't forget the leap seconds.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:51AM (3 children)
Perhaps so. But normally one would say that the solar flares were detected/observed/seen/fondled/fellated/whatever at TAI. What TFS says is:
It may well have been an extraordinary day (it was definitely my ex-gf's birthday, too) for Proxima Centauri, but we won't know anything about that for more than four years.
I was a bit taken aback myself. Not because I was confused about what the author meant, but because what she is quoted as saying is imprecise.
If nothing else, the author certainly knows better. Despite the fact that the quote was almost certainly intended to make the science seem more immediate and accessible to the general public, she should strive for precision when reporting scientific observations IMHO.
Unless, of course, she believes that events do not occur until they are observed. One would hope not.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:09PM (2 children)
Your ex-girlfriend and Mac OS X share a birthday.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:28PM (1 child)
Interesting. She's an Apple fangirl, so she'll be happy to hear that. Thanks.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:18PM
The definition of "ex" certainly isn't precise concerning the level of communication. If it was a nasty breakup with a permanent icy silence that will never thaw, then you can only surmise that the birthday correspondence would please her. If you're still friends, then you probably can get her answer on this vitally important matter.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:36AM (1 child)
Because you believe a popular science write-up, complete with "artists impressions" (AKA sci-fi/fantasy paintings), rather than the original sources. The scientists, unlike the journalists, clearly state that it is the *observations* which date back 11 months.
Answer 2)
However, they do say that the flare happened *during* the observations. But that's natural. When something is seen, you say it is happening, present tense/aspect, even if you know that there's been a propagation delay. To you, it's the present, even if to everyone not on the same sphere in space as you it's either the past or the future. Simpler to use only one reference frame in each sentence, and the sentence was about observations. Similarly, it's best to refer to things that have not happened yet, according to our ability to detect them, in the future tense, which means that several years of the star's past needs to be referred to as future (and the momentary instant between the unobservable and the already observed as present).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:05AM
I agree completely with your assessment of how descriptions of events/observations are, and should normally be, presented.
However, if you read TFS, the *quote* was reported as coming from the lead author's mouth, not paraphrased or summarized by a journalist.
If it was a direct quote "March 24, 2017 was no ordinary day for Proxima Cen," it was (a little shockingly to me) quite imprecise.
I suppose I'm splitting hairs, but if the quote is accurate, the content of same is not. At best, the quote is incomplete, e.g. "[Our observations on] March 24, 2017 showed us no ordinary day for Proxima Centauri," or the quote is imprecise.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:51PM
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday March 01 2018, @12:14AM
Fake news from the same mathematicians who claimed Hillary had a 99% chance of winning on election day?
Its the old anti-conspiracy theory observation that the world contains a lot more incompetence than malice, or in this case, faster-than-light journalist correspondents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @06:10AM
March 24th, margin of error 350 days. Its the New Math, joined by the New Statistics and New Dates.
I'm writing this on February 30th from a capsule trapped in a warp continuum.