Spoiler: "megabytes" are abbreviated as MB, but many people don't see to remember that SI units are case-sensitive.
# grug see big sky boom
- sky make ooga FLASH but not light, just invisible whoosh (radio).
- whoosh so strong, like sun work many day, but all squish into blink of eye.
- smart sky-people have big ear rock (CHIME). ear rock say: "boom come from there, galaxy far, but not too far (only 130 million fire-circles (light years) away)."
- ear rock also have many little ear-brother rock across land, help point finger very good.
- finger point so good, sky-people know spot of boom smaller than tree forest (13 parsec).
- then, magic glass eye (James Webb) look at spot. see old fat star (red giant) glowing soft.
- but fat star not make ooga boom. hmm. maybe fat star have sneaky tiny angry friend (neutron star).
- tiny angry friend go "KRAK!" → make fast radio boom.
# lesson for tree-brain
- boom in sky still big mystery.
- now smart sky-people can say where boom come from.
- if know where, can watch with other eyes, maybe find secret of why.
- grug think: many sky boom = maybe angry tiny stars yelling far away.
# Ooga booga translation:
"Tree no know why sky yell. But now tree know where sky yell. Soon, tree maybe know why sky yell."
Astronomers processed a bunch of data from a fairly new antenna array (CHIME) and saw a giant burst of energy in radio range (above 20khz), localized to a 10 light year “bubble” of space, that is relatively close to us, as a novel measurement precision
James Webb then also correlated an IR signal near this radio signal
So it seems to me that we’re finally just seeing for the first time the actual data that is coming into earth, a lot of the analysis seems to think this is a new thing but in fact it’s simply just new for us to be able to measure
CHIME nor these methods existed previously to the last 5 years so we’re likely going to see a lot of what we just haven’t been seeing.
It doesn’t mean it’s new it just means astronomers are getting better tools to continue to refine the granularity of measurements
A nice overview talk can be found here[1], which also goes into the objects it detects such as FRBs.
CHIME is also used to detect millisecond pulsars, and is part of the NANOGrav[2] pulsar timing array, which measures very low frequency gravitational waves from merging supermassive black holes and such.
Good job Canada getting CHIME built and keeping it running.
Perspective is always so interesting. I’ve never thought of anything 130 million light years to be nearby but on a universe spanning scale it kind of is.
In the abstract, they use the unit erg s^-1 Hz^-1. In other RF fields, we would use dBm/Hz which is a measure of power spectral density. 10^29 erg s^-1 Hz^-1 is equivalent to 260dBm/Hz.
I'm still fascinated at the prospect of these "star quakes" or magnetic flares that emerge from these stars. I guess these fields would weaken over time, but does it really maintain it's mass, just lose rotation speed or something?
addaon•5mo ago
bqmjjx0kac•5mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jansky
dotancohen•5mo ago
8bitsrule•5mo ago
1 Jy = 10-23 erg s-1 cm-2 Hz-1 (cgs)
only their figure: L9.9 GHz < 2.1 × 10^25 erg s−1 Hz−1
leaves out the cm-2. (So not a density, like Jy. Perhaps 'L' is luminosity? ... As in: "The solar luminosity unit is a measure of the Sun's radiant energy and is equal to 3.828×10^(26) Watts." -(NRAO)
While groping, I found this helpful page called Brightness in Radio Astronomy: http://physics.wku.edu/~gibson/radio/brightness.html
dotancohen•5mo ago
But that's division, not multiplication. Another thread in my brain thought maybe the product of the two could be useful for people in that field, sort of how ISP is useful to people in rocketry but us normal people need to divide it by G(earth) to get something intuitive.
guenthert•5mo ago
rbanffy•5mo ago
dotancohen•5mo ago
hdgvhicv•5mo ago