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Stellar collision confirms theoretical predictions about the periodic table
- pavel_lishin 9y ago> They called the event GW170817, after the date it was detected. I am horrified by the date format in that naming convention.
- r00fus 9y agoWhat you don't think the date string 120521 is unambiguous? Oh or was that 051221 or was that 210512...?
- ColanR 9y agoI see no problem with that date. yy-mm-dd ensures that files are always ordered correctly by date.
- bdamm 9y agoNot true in 2100.
- indrax 9y agoI don't know, but it is possible that the GW encodes something that increases once a century or faster. There is definitely more information in two letters than two digits.
- planteen 9y agoGW = gravitational wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitational_wave_observations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitational_wave_obs...
- yorwba 9y agoThe formula (year - 2000) * 10000 + month * 100 + day can perfectly accommodate any future dates, until we change our calendar.
- delbel 9y agohowever if we invent time travel, and go back into the year 2000 we wouldn't be able to store any event data. furthermore, to get back, if that data field was used to store event data and the coordinates to get back to the current location of earth, could send you to a divide by zero coordinate and you wouldn't be able to get back. The solution is to just ban time travel to the year 2000 until a patch comes out
- wongarsu 9y agoBut without zero-padding, it will sort wrong when using lexiographic order (as is common). 1180101 would sort before 171204 in many contexts, even though it should clearly come behind the latter.
- ggus 9y agoThis is another reason why we should call this year 12017 [1], the next 12018, and so on. [1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a24195/case-for-a-new-calendar-12017/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a24195/c...
- Mtinie 9y agoIt’s bad, and for a number of alternative dates using the same formatting it would be unreadable. They were lucky in this specific case. Not so much for others... for example, ‘GW011012’ Nice...
- nazgul17 9y agoIsn't it just an identifier that then points to all the meta-data?
- pavel_lishin 9y agoGW - gravitational wave 170817 - one of the worse ways to format a date.
- ekblom 9y agoIt makes you wanna cry..
- Panoramix 9y agoThe date when it was discovered is irrelevant - no astronomer cares about that. You should think of it as a unique string associated with some data + coordinates.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoBut it's not unique. What if we get two gravitational hits on one day? Or what if we get one on January 1, 2019 and also one on January 1, 2119?
- welterde 9y agoGRBs are named in a similar fashion with simply having an additional character at the end, for example GRB171010B is the second GRB of 2017-10-10. And the naming scheme will simply have to change in 2100 (actually probably already 2090 because the system was in use before 2000).. Supernovae on the other hand are named with the full year followed by one or more characters to disambiguate them - for example SN1987A or SN2013EE. This is handled centrally by the IAU and takes some time, which usually means that the same object is known under many different temporary names until the official name is assigned (and only if it is an actual supernova!).
- daxfohl 9y agoIt's kind of astounding given we're just dumb people on a dumb planet moving at uninteresting speeds or distances or times that we can predict the result of a neutron star collision and be right. Especially when our physics breaks down at those energy and gravity levels.
- niwri 9y agoUninteresting speeds that allow for us to even exist at all. Maybe not so uninteresting :) (I know what you meant though).
- labster 9y agoHey! Don't insult my planet! The people here... can't argue that one.
- Mz 9y agoVisiting Vulcans doing the field portion of their degree in Human Studies can. #notreallymyplanet
- cool_username 9y ago> we can predict the result of a neutron star collision and be right To be fair, what we're predicting happened long ago in the past... predictions about the past are always easier :)
- daxfohl 9y agoTouche
- colordrops 9y agoThe speeds, distances, and times are only uninteresting because you are familiar with them. They are all both unimaginably large and unbearably miniscule depending on the context.
- nerdponx 9y ago
- jakeogh 9y agoAny spectroscopic hints pro/con for an island of stability?
- greglindahl 9y agoNot a chance -- there's not enough to be measured.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoThere are literally tons of gold and platinum streaming through space now, just waiting to be picked up :-)
- cryptonector 9y agoAnd, if you just could, it would become worthless by its very abundance.
- giomasce 9y agoNot a problem, if your interest lies in using them instead of storing them.
- cryptonector 9y agoKnowledge of its availability would be sufficient to act as downward pressure on prices. Why pay $X for an ounce of gold if enough to drive the price down to one millionth of $x could come to the market at any time?
- coldcode 9y agoDiamonds are very common, yet somehow that fact is controlled.
- ams6110 9y agoWhen people talk about diamonds being rare, they are generally talking about gemstone quality diamonds. Those, and the work needed to make them look like gemstones, are not so common.
- cryptonector 9y agoThat one is cultural. And that's true of gold as well, but not platinum.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoThey are actually useful for other things besides representing value of course. Given the frequency of GRBs this isn't a 'rare' occurrence in the universe, and if these materials are in 'jets' then the number of rocky bodies that have been hit by a jet of this material have a high probability of existing[1]. So it might be reasonable to postulate planets with massive amounts of these metals. And certainly there are asteroids in our own solar system that Planetary Resources seeks to recover. I think once we're reasonably good as interplanetary travel we'll see a lot more of this material being made available. [1] Where even a small probability of a collision event is overwhelmed by the sheer age of the universe and the number of events.
- hyperpallium 9y agoI lack perspective here, but aren't neutron star collisions too rare to account for all the gold and other >Fe elements on Earth?
- dnautics 9y agoThat's what I thought too. Supernovae are probably at least 100x more common and probably yield more per incident too.
- 0xFFFE 9y agoWhenever I read about neutron stars, they are always too far away (like millions of light years), so I did a quick search and found one closest to earth about 250 to 1000 light years and apparently it is above the plane of the milky way galaxy. https://www.space.com/4247-astronomers-find-closest-neutron-star.html https://www.space.com/4247-astronomers-find-closest-neutron-... I wish we could watch these neutron stars and black holes more closely, we know so little about the universe.
- Already__Taken 9y agoMaking sure you don't miss this in that case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt82NjSPAc8&disable_polymer=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt82NjSPAc8&disable_polymer=...
- 0xFFFE 9y agoThank you for the link, it's amazing how quickly it cooled down. I thought it would take hundreds of years for it to go from blue to red. But I guess since the merger of the neutron star resulted in the formation of blackhole, It could explain the rapid cooling down, a la endothermic reaction so to speak :)
- phkahler 9y agoMost interesting to me is that the signature detected in the gravitational waves was up to 6 minutes long. With increased accuracy and quicker notification, telescopes could be aimed at such collisions before they happen. I never would have thought that was possible before.