Stellar Ticking Time Bomb Explodes on Cue

How cool is this?!?!?
We would all love to see a supernova but since they usually dont last long we find out about it after the event.
Now we know when it will happen and be ready for it. I am looking forward to seeing alerts and maybe even live feeds for those on the wrong side of the planet at the time.

an international team of astronomers has discovered a timing mechanism that allows them to predict exactly when a superdense star will unleash incredibly powerful explosions.

"We found a clock that ticks slower and slower, and when it slows down too much, boom! The bomb explodes," says lead author Diego Altamirano of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

link

Tht is awsome, those images are really cool to. Dang, seems like the x ray technology is more useful every year. I can't wait to see a video of this event as well. Should prove to be a valuable lesson for any science minded person.

Nice find!

Thanks Advisor. Yeah, a vid would be amazing to see. I am also looking forward to what other new discoveries they will find for us.
I know will now be keeping an eye out for the next supernova event.

It's not actually predicting super-novas, it's predicting x-ray bursts from neutron stars.

Neutron Stars are what's left after a super-nova and according to the article they can give off these x-ray bursts several times a day.

Maybe this will help people realise that time can be irregular!
awesome find op

But why go to the trouble of simulating the process, when supernovae are happening all over the sky, and can be observed form a telescope? Jordan explains: "When we look up into space we can only observe the results of the explosion, and have never caught a supernova in the act of exploding."

Video simulates a spectacular supernova

Here is a direct link to the video

Now here is a bit of a contradiction. If we can 'predict' when the explosion will be why not get a live video? Don't these guys talk to each other?

The article istelf is still interesting none the less.

We can't predict a Supernova. Please read your original article (not just the quoted section) and you'll see that they can only predict x-ray bursts from stars that have previously exploded in a Supernova. X-rays are invisible to the naked eye, regular telescopes and video cameras.

Nice one Viking.

Looks set to be an interesting week from NASA as theyve lined up some disclosure thing about the Chandra telescope's Galaxy Hunt or something along those lines.

reply to post by mythatsabigprobe


That'll learn me!! I actually read another article which said they were predicting supernova. It referenced and linked the NASA site. I read part of it and most of the info seemed the same.
Not quite what I thought but I hope it is interesting to others anyway.

Well here we go. I guess it was only a matter of time.....

Studying this initial X-ray outburst will also give astronomers a signature to help them spy other newborn supernovas and set their time of explosion to within a few seconds, instead of a few days like previous timing estimates.


"We also now know what X-ray pattern to look for," Gehrels said. "Hopefully we will be able to find many more supernovae at this critical moment."

Totally unrelated to the original article but now it seems we might be able to 'predict' and monitor the actual supernova in action.

I figured it best to repost here intead of starting a new thread since we have already stared discussing it....sort of

[url=http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080521-supernova-birth.html]Here is the rest of the story[url]