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posted by mrpg on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the oh dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

James Clerk Maxwell Telescope discovers flare 10 billion times more powerful than those on the sun

The Hawaii-based James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) has discovered a stellar flare 10 billion times more powerful than the Sun's solar flares, a history-making discovery that could unlock decades-old questions about the origin of our own Sun and planets, giving insight into how these celestial bodies were born.

"A discovery of this magnitude could have only happened in Hawaii," said Dr. Steve Mairs, astronomer and lead investigator of the team that discovered the stellar flare. "Using the JCMT, we study the birth of nearby stars as a means of understanding the history of our very own solar system. Observing flares around the youngest stars is new territory and it is giving us key insights into the physical conditions of these systems. This is one of the ways we are working toward answering people's most enduring questions about space, time, and the universe that surrounds us."

The JCMT Transient Survey team recorded the 1,500-year-old flare using the telescope's state-of the art high-frequency radio technology and sophisticated image analysis techniques. Identified by astronomer Dr. Steve Mairs, the original data was obtained using the JCMT's supercooled camera known as "SCUBA-2," which is kept at a frigid -459.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

[NB: Absolute zero is -459.67° on the Fahrenheit scale or −273.15° on the Celsius scale. --martyb]


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @02:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @02:12AM (#800437)

    No, Mahommed was born about 400 years after dots were used for punctuation. This is ~400 years before commas were invented.