Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Did you see this news item?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
ER — (archived)

Thanks for pointing this out to me, Larry, the initial reports sound very interesting. The exciting thing about this is that we don't even know if this a galactic, or extra-galactic object, so it's very hard to make any educated guesses as to what we're seeing because we have no way of knowing how far away it is, or even how big it is (which depends on the distance).

We keep pretty good tabs on supernovae because there are automated telescopes and dedicated amateurs who regularly monitor distant galaxies for them, but normally they don't look for them in the spaces between the galaxies. This type of object could be extremely common but totally unknown for the simple reason that we're not looking for them in the right places. It appears this was a completely serendipitous discovery. Go Hubble!

If it's a local object, it certainly fits our preliminary profile of possible Type II civilization activity. Normal galactic novae discoveries are pretty common, (due to amateur observers and routine photographic patrols) even though we undoubtedly miss most of them, especially since we can only see them a short distance away due to obscuration in the Milky Way plane (Fox's observation). This is either a huge event very far away, or a very odd one relatively close by. Either way, I am looking forward to more observations.

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