A billion light years away, a monster star tore itself to shreds.
And by that I mean it tore itself to shreds. In general exploding stars — supernovae — leave behind a neutron star or black hole, but in this case it’s possible that the explosions was so over-the-top ridiculously violent that even the star’s core was ripped apart. It’s difficult to exaggerate how violent an event this was… but then, when huge amounts of antimatter are involved, that’s what happens.
Yes, seriously.
The event is called SN2016iet, a supernova that was detected on November 14, 2016. It was first spotted in data taken by the space-based Gaia observatory, and was followed-up by the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey, then Pan-STARRS, and eventually the huge Gemini Telescope to get deep spectra of it. But it didn’t take long to determine that this particular supernova was weird.
And then they found it was really weird.
But even then it didn’t behave properly. Instead of fading away into obscurity, the supernova continued to shine, fading much more slowly than usual. The astronomers were still able to observe it in spring of this year, more than two years after the initial explosion.
[...] So in the end, nothing with this supernova fits. No one model seems to explain everything it’s doing, which means it truly is one of a kind. Nothing like it has ever been seen before, and we can’t fully explain its behavior.
I wonder though, just how long this will remain a unique event. We now observe thousands of supernovae every year. Even if this event is extremely rare, we’re likely to find another one eventually. Maybe not exactly like it, but close enough that we can compare them, see how they differ. That will help astronomers understand how these catastrophic events occur in the first place. Although these kinds of supernovae are at the tippy-top of the scale, they provide checks on our understanding of the physics of exploding stars under extraordinarily extreme conditions.
And, as I mentioned before the very first stars in the Universe may have exploded like SN2016iet, so observing it is like a window in to the very distant past, 12 billion or more years ago, when the very first generation of stars existed. For that reason alone, I hope we find lots more just like it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @08:19PM (13 children)
Perhaps your estimate of the distance to the supernova is wrong?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday August 18 2019, @08:55PM (2 children)
Except if you actually read TFA, it was already trying to model the event with a model that was assumed to be most appropriate for another distance. TFA claims they tried fitting it to all models of supernovas (even those less likely to happen only a billion light years away) and no current model seems to fit completely.
Meaning either that the models for supernovas are missing something and/or the circumstances here are weird enough that it produced evidence appearing to be outside known models (even though it might still be doing basically what models predict, just in a weird context). At least, that's what I get from TFA.
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Monday August 19 2019, @12:43AM (1 child)
no current model seems to fit completely
You have to use the right model. It passed across the screen and was hit by the laser cannon. There ya go...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @04:09PM
Specifically:
1) P(A|B)/P(¬A|B) = P(B|A)/P(B|¬A) * P(A)/P(¬A)
2) a better fit corresponds to a larger value of P(B|A)/P(B|¬A)
3) a higher prior for the model corresponds to a larger value of P(A)/P(¬A)
4) a sufficiently low prior can cause a better fitting explanation to be less likely
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:07PM (8 children)
If you think you've spotted a mistake in a paper which a child could, and you haven't read the paper, then you're overwhelmingly likely to be wrong. Physicists aren't idiots, summaries necessarily leave out information. If you want to criticize a paper then you need to read it, not journalists explanations of it or a press release about it.
I'm sure there are many examples of stupid mistakes a child could spot in published research, but they're rare enough that flaws in a summary of it are nowhere near strong enough reason to believe you've found one without reading the paper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:31PM (2 children)
Here is what they do:
MOND predicts very precisely what observations should be observed, but there is uncertainty in some of the measurements. So they use statistics saying that "if MOND is correct, we should only reject that model 5% of the time". Then they look at 100 galaxies, and see that, according to their criteria, MOND is not consistent with the data for 3 of them. Then they say, see we need dark matter to explain everything.
Using their methods, if MOND is 100% accurate, we would expect 5% of the galaxies to be inconsistent with the observations. In reality, it is even less than that.
So any theory that cannot explain MOND (ie, GR + dark matter) is worthless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @05:54PM (1 child)
Rigorous bounds on the quality of the approximation derived from the laws it approximates a la deriving a probabilistic version of Boyle's law from more fundamental laws, or measurement error?
If the measurement error, it's silly to look for better models.
If the former, it's worth looking for them.
Presumably physicists wouldn't make such a simple mistake, and it's not likely to be measurement error.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @07:17PM
This is statistical error, they assume the brightness, etc that is directly measured is not exactly correct but instead sampled from a distribution (eg, normal distribution). I think you'll just have to look up how confidence intervals work because I can tell you are unfamiliar with the topic.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday August 19 2019, @01:31AM (4 children)
And yet, physicists assume they understand supernovae at the percent-level and ascribe deviations from their expectation to dark energy. Idiocy comes in many forms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @06:23AM (2 children)
> physicists assume they understand supernovae at the percent-level
You mean, physicists have hundreds of samples with values within 1% of prediction bounds, and try to figure out what other math / new physics / other explanations might describe rare data which doesn't fit?
> Idiocy comes in many forms.
What are you trying to say here? Physicists are idiots for not knowing, or for trying to figure out consistent math systems to describe phenomena, or...?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @01:11PM (1 child)
This would indeed be idiotic, since the meaning of the 1% bound is that 1% of the data shouldn't fit if your theory is correct. There is no need for some other explanation for rare observations that don't fit. This is a dog chasing its tail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @04:32PM
There is error in the measurement, which is what you address in your comment.
There is also error in the models, because they are imperfect approximations.
If the observations are better explained by error in the model than by error in the measurement* then they should look for better models.
Since these are professional smart people™, I'm going to assume that they've done those calculations and found a high probability the error is in their model and not the measurement.
If you think they haven't, then write a paper pointing that out, because it would be a significant contribution to physics that they would /welcome/. How happy physicists would be to discover you've saved them wasting their time.
If you can't write that paper, then you're in no position to make that claim.
*and this is a quantitative calculation, not a judgment call, though judgment calls may be required in making that calculation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @09:06PM
Not even knowing enough about what you're criticizing to word the insult properly?
Hmmm, I'm gonna go with "this guy is a (s)table genius." The (s) is for super.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:28PM
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by corey on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:16PM (5 children)
It's like they write these articles for teenagers....
I don't need that kind of fluff for it to keep me interested. Sheesh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:32PM
But maybe teenagers do.
The world doesn't revolve around you.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:38PM (2 children)
It is propaganda. A lot of these dark matter and string theory pushing people had links to Epstein too.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @10:37PM (1 child)
ermahgherd clinton body count! they're pushing dark matter to hide the weather war!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @11:30PM
I'd guess to impede development of strategic technologies.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday August 19 2019, @05:05PM
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...' -- Isaac Asimov
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:25PM
In a galaxy far far away...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:31PM
Yaah, shit happens all over the place. Sue somebody and go cry to yo mama.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Nuke on Sunday August 18 2019, @11:16PM
I hope it's not ours. Can someone on the other side of the world let me know, it's night here at the moment so I can't tell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 18 2019, @11:47PM
You won't believe what happened next...
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @12:34AM
Do they bully you to suck? I thought this was a volunteer enterprise. Why doi you suck so bad? Is it ignorance, or indifference? Why do you suck so bad?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @01:06AM
Just wait for Elon Musk's ego to reach critical mass.
(Score: 1) by JediTrainer on Monday August 19 2019, @01:54PM
(Score: 2) by jdccdevel on Monday August 19 2019, @06:11PM
The most interesting part of this to me is the antimatter.
I don't know much about supernovae, but I've always heard that the natural formation of antimatter is a very, very unusual thing.
I don't have the technical background to read the paper directly to see if they explain where the antimatter came from.
Does anyone have any more information about the process that may have created this? Or is where the antimatter came from the mystery here?
Thanks!