New Scientist, etc: Crab Nebula amazes astronomers with its gamma ray flares. Sound at all familiar?
In Science this week a large team of astronomers reports powerful gamma ray bursts from the crab nebula, the famous expanding debris cloud left behind by a nearby (-ish) supernova nearly 500 years ago. Stanford’s SLAC national lab put out a press release. It’s not only a surprise to see so much boisterousness from this nebula, a steady source of X-rays, but it reveals the scene to be the most vigorous natural particle accelerator yet found.
A few of you may remember hearing about this, more on that below, but the news gets appreciable pickup:
- New Scientist – Rachel Courtland : Mystery flares betray hidden force within Crab nebula; Long, graceful, nicely done.
- Ars Technica – John Timmer: Crab Nebula gets erratic with gamma-ray outbursts ; Whoops. Timmer puts the date of the observation of this ten years more recently than one reads elsewhere. He also makes the remarkable decison to use this phrasing, via a quote: “…is powered by the central neutron star which acts as a DC uniopolar inductor and a source of an AC striped wind.” Those Ars Technica readers must be of a special stripe themselves.
- Universe Today – Jon Voisey: Crab Nebula Flares ;
There are some more, and as often happens, this news has done broke already. That’s not a reason not to have covered it now. Most readers have no idea about this, and it is news with intrigue for the science-savvy. But the results were at a meeting and at least one reporter was there ahead of the pack, showing as ever that going places in one’s own corporeal self can be a lot better and more fun than to wait for press releases and other electronic arrivals:
- Science News (Jan 1) Ron Cowen: Crab nebula outbursts shock astronomers ; And ksjtracker happened to have noticed this at the time: Previous Post.
Grist for the Mill: Stanford/SLAC Press Release ;
- Charlie Petit
