5 ms·

Exploring nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950 (2021)

70 points by joebiden2 4y ago

marstall 4y ago
is it alieans
- ctoth 4y ago
  It's never aliens! Until it is.
  - khochesh_kushat 4y ago
    Sometimes, even then, it isn't.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Little did the scientists of the 50’s know, they would actually be the subject of observations from some hyper advanced society. Their measurements, sure, but also their instruments, how they cooked their lunch, down to their very sneezes would be analyzed.
  - intrasight 4y ago
    I think it's a given that every human alive today will be extensively studied in the distant future. Each of us will be the subject or several PhDs. What is not certain is if those future researchers will be man or machine.
martinpw 4y ago
Since it is not obvious from the title, clarifying that this is astronomy related. Some more context: Nine point sources appeared within half an hour on a region within ∼ 10 arcmin of a red-sensitive photographic plate taken in April 1950 as part of the historic Palomar Sky Survey.
bee_rider 4y ago
I don’t really know anything about astronomy but it is an interesting read. They are really hitting these old photos with a ton of brainpower. There seems to be quite a well developed science around the use of old photos and the things that can contaminate them. It is interesting because the folks who made these photos in the 50’s were themselves scientists and existed in a society different from but of course pretty close to our own. I wonder if they thought of these photos as a record for posterity, or just an incidental work-product (I guess at least a little bit of the former, because some effort has been put into preserving them). I wonder what they imagined we’d do with them. I wonder what they’ll do with our ancillary work-product in 70 years. It is pretty funny that we’ve got this giant worldwide network, and it is probably easier for us to combine observations from their datasets than it even was for them. They’d have to at least walk down the hallway if they wanted to borrow a “good” copy photo from a colleague.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  > I wonder if they thought of these photos as a record for posterity, or just an incidental work-product Typically both. That's why the plates were carefully cataloged. It was not uncommon for plates to be exposed/developed and not actually be looked at by a researcher for months or years. It's not researchers were lazy but if they were doing a survey and have 100 plates it took time to get through them. A plate needs its provenance cataloged so when handed to a research assistant they've got the metadata needed to properly catalog the plate's contents. Even in the plate days researchers would do meta-surveys comparing plates they may have done with archived plates made years or decades prior. Lots of comets, asteroids, and other transient phenomena have been discovered because a researcher has been able to look at decades worth of exposures to some patch of sky. In the 90s I remember reading about a lot of universities/observatories digitizing their plates (then on CD-ROM) so they were more readily available to contemporary researchers.
- Sharlin 4y ago
  It's not unusual to delve into the archives, so to say, to find precoveries, ie. old observations that confirm a later discovery that originally went unnoticed, and astronomers in the 50s were certainly aware of this.
philsnow 4y ago
April 12th is also the anniversary of Yuri's night (1961) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Night
anotheraccount9 4y ago
May I suggest a video titled "Over 700 Stars Mysteriously Vanished In The Last 70 Years, But Why?" by Anton Petrov? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3xddkS4H80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3xddkS4H80)
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Ups. "Dark forest" comes to mind...
  - anotheraccount9 4y ago
    I'll check it out
    - twawaaay 4y ago
      Great. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
    - adastra22 4y ago
      Don't. There are better, less cringy Fermi paradox sci-fi out there.
      - Vecr 4y ago
        Dubious uses of carbon nanotubes only surpassed by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Though, I wonder if the real message of the series is "don't let women get into positions of power, because they lack the resolve in acausal bargaining related to existential second strikes", and it just went over everyone's head.
throwawaymaths 4y ago
cerenkov radiation from a fleet of starships hitting their warp drives?
cozzyd 4y ago
[flagged]
l33tman 4y ago
"The glass cover during the plate scanning process is a possible source of contamination." "The best way to exclude the possibility of contamination causing the simultaneous transients is by examining the original photographic plates with a microscope11. Unfortunately, we have no access to the original POSS-I plates." Was a bit surprised that they have produced this detailed article describing all possible sources they could come up with, and got it published in Nature but didn't check the originals..

70 points by joebiden2 4y ago

marstall 4y ago

is it alieans

ctoth 4y ago
It's never aliens! Until it is.
- khochesh_kushat 4y ago
  Sometimes, even then, it isn't.
bee_rider 4y ago
Little did the scientists of the 50’s know, they would actually be the subject of observations from some hyper advanced society. Their measurements, sure, but also their instruments, how they cooked their lunch, down to their very sneezes would be analyzed.
- intrasight 4y ago
  I think it's a given that every human alive today will be extensively studied in the distant future. Each of us will be the subject or several PhDs. What is not certain is if those future researchers will be man or machine.

martinpw 4y ago

Since it is not obvious from the title, clarifying that this is astronomy related. Some more context: Nine point sources appeared within half an hour on a region within ∼ 10 arcmin of a red-sensitive photographic plate taken in April 1950 as part of the historic Palomar Sky Survey.

bee_rider 4y ago

I don’t really know anything about astronomy but it is an interesting read. They are really hitting these old photos with a ton of brainpower. There seems to be quite a well developed science around the use of old photos and the things that can contaminate them. It is interesting because the folks who made these photos in the 50’s were themselves scientists and existed in a society different from but of course pretty close to our own. I wonder if they thought of these photos as a record for posterity, or just an incidental work-product (I guess at least a little bit of the former, because some effort has been put into preserving them). I wonder what they imagined we’d do with them. I wonder what they’ll do with our ancillary work-product in 70 years. It is pretty funny that we’ve got this giant worldwide network, and it is probably easier for us to combine observations from their datasets than it even was for them. They’d have to at least walk down the hallway if they wanted to borrow a “good” copy photo from a colleague.

giantrobot 4y ago
> I wonder if they thought of these photos as a record for posterity, or just an incidental work-product Typically both. That's why the plates were carefully cataloged. It was not uncommon for plates to be exposed/developed and not actually be looked at by a researcher for months or years. It's not researchers were lazy but if they were doing a survey and have 100 plates it took time to get through them. A plate needs its provenance cataloged so when handed to a research assistant they've got the metadata needed to properly catalog the plate's contents. Even in the plate days researchers would do meta-surveys comparing plates they may have done with archived plates made years or decades prior. Lots of comets, asteroids, and other transient phenomena have been discovered because a researcher has been able to look at decades worth of exposures to some patch of sky. In the 90s I remember reading about a lot of universities/observatories digitizing their plates (then on CD-ROM) so they were more readily available to contemporary researchers.
Sharlin 4y ago
It's not unusual to delve into the archives, so to say, to find precoveries, ie. old observations that confirm a later discovery that originally went unnoticed, and astronomers in the 50s were certainly aware of this.

philsnow 4y ago

April 12th is also the anniversary of Yuri's night (1961) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Night

anotheraccount9 4y ago

May I suggest a video titled "Over 700 Stars Mysteriously Vanished In The Last 70 Years, But Why?" by Anton Petrov? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3xddkS4H80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3xddkS4H80)

twawaaay 4y ago
Ups. "Dark forest" comes to mind...
- anotheraccount9 4y ago
  I'll check it out
  - twawaaay 4y ago
    Great. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Don't. There are better, less cringy Fermi paradox sci-fi out there.
    - Vecr 4y ago
      Dubious uses of carbon nanotubes only surpassed by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Though, I wonder if the real message of the series is "don't let women get into positions of power, because they lack the resolve in acausal bargaining related to existential second strikes", and it just went over everyone's head.

throwawaymaths 4y ago

cerenkov radiation from a fleet of starships hitting their warp drives?

cozzyd 4y ago

[flagged]

l33tman 4y ago

"The glass cover during the plate scanning process is a possible source of contamination." "The best way to exclude the possibility of contamination causing the simultaneous transients is by examining the original photographic plates with a microscope11. Unfortunately, we have no access to the original POSS-I plates." Was a bit surprised that they have produced this detailed article describing all possible sources they could come up with, and got it published in Nature but didn't check the originals..