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N.A.S.A. NEWS: A "ROAR" FROM OUTER SPACE RECORDED!!!!, ORIGIN OF SIGNAL A MYSTERY

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"Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.

The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.

Of course, sound waves can't travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can't very efficiently. But radio waves can.

Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum.

Many objects in the universe, including stars and quasars, emit radio waves. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, emits a static hiss (first detected in 1931 by physicist Karl Jansky). Other galaxies also send out a background radio hiss.

But the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected.

There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission).

In July 2006, the instrument was launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and reached an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,500 meters), where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.

ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe.

"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted."

Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.

Other radio galaxies also can't account for the noise – there just aren't enough of them.

"You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."

The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.

For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.

"We really don't know what it is,"said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

And not only has it presented astronomers with a new puzzle, it is obscuring the sought-for signal from the earliest stars. But the cosmic static may itself provide important clues to the development of galaxies when the universe was much younger, less than half its present age. Because the radio waves come from far away, traveling at the speed of light, they therefore represent an earlier time in the universe.

"This is what makes science so exciting," Seiffert said. "You start out on a path to measure something – in this case, the heat from the very first stars – but run into something else entirely, some unexplained."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0901...smic-noise.html

 

“First feel fear, then get angry. Then go with your life into the fight.” - Bill Mollison

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If I had to make an uneducated guess (cosmology is not my thing), it's probably an unknown electromagnetic/plasma process that helps form things like galaxies and solar systems. If that's the case, the electromagnetic filaments would be far away and very huge.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Did you know you can pick up Jupiters radio waves on your radio?

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My guess would be a space slug.

 

Sean, what station does Jupiter broadcast from? Any good talk shows or music stations?

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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C3PX said:

My guess would be a space slug.

 

Sean, what station does Jupiter broadcast from? Any good talk shows or music stations?

All they play is that damn Jupiter jazz. I heard this from The History Channel show The Universe.

Here is what it sounds like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3fqE01YYWs

 

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C3PX said:

My guess would be a space slug.

 

Sean, what station does Jupiter broadcast from? Any good talk shows or music stations?

 

Hope its not the one which makes Slurms

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And now they've detected 'Methane' on Mars (caused by some kind of bacteria presumably....or Martian cows). 

Can it be long before 'Gort' pays us all a visit?....  ;)

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DarkGryphon2048 said:

MGM has competition! I know cheesy response.

I don't get it.

 

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.

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Come on, guys! A roar! Like the MGM lion!

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Oh, ok.

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.

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Oh, ok.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

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Gaffer Tape said:Come on, guys! A roar! Like the MGM lion!

At least you got it Gaffer.

 

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I do what I can. ^_^

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.