NASA to announce finding something after 50 year search.

Here be the press release. 1pm EDT. It's daylight savings time over there isn't it? So that'd be 5pm UTC.

Any bets on what it could be? The exciting end of the spectrum - little green men, habitable planet, God (who will soon be needing a starship).
Or the actual tedious meat and potatoes of the trade - a new kind of dust, a black hole, something that only astrophysicists would get excited about while the rest of us go "Oh."

The reason for their continued funding?

discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years

What object did they start to hunt 50 years ago?

Originally Posted by zakhal
What object did they start to hunt 50 years ago?

Dark matter?

The key phrases are "in our galaxy" and "X-ray." My guess is "the central black hole in the Milky Way galaxy."

They already found 2 at the centre of the milky way.

"Object" is a weird term to use --and NASA was only created around 50 years ago(1958 or 59 I think) so it can't be something they personally lost, like a probe or something--Explorer 1 launched around '58, but it crashed and burned a long time ago. Also, the word "discovery" implies something never seen before.

Interesting.

Hm. Maybe they found them again. Better.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
The key phrases are "in our galaxy" and "X-ray." My guess is "the central black hole in the Milky Way galaxy."

I guessed that too at first, but I thought they allready knew where it (or them) was. 50 years to find a giant black hole from the center of the galaxy? Ok.

Audio conference says "It's a supernova leftover that's only about a hundred years old. The most recent one we've ever found."

I was hoping for a glass of lime cordial, or a teapot orbiting Mars.

EDIT: Still, it looks quite pleasingly spacey and strange

My intuition says that this has something to do for a long, long, long sought prove for a theory …

Maybe even a proof of the Gravity Force ? This is something scientists have been looking for quite some time …

Or even "worse" : Some new particles ? There are a few standing very, very, very high on the list called "Most Wanted" …

Originally Posted by Dyne
Audio conference says "It's a supernova leftover that's only about a hundred years old. The most recent one we've ever found."

I was hoping for a glass of lime cordial, or a teapot orbiting Mars.

EDIT: Still, it looks quite pleasingly spacey and strange

Oh so thats what they started to look 50 years ago, "a supernova leftover thats 100 years old". Well I sure couldnt have guessed that one.

Originally Posted by zakhal
Oh so thats what they started to look 50 years ago, "a supernova leftover thats 100 years old".

Only in the sense that it has been known for 50 years that such a thing as supernova remnants exists. I guess it's a natural thing to say, "let's find the youngest one there is" then, although there is no guarantee that this object is really the most recent one in the Milky Way. And this particular object has been known for almost 25 years. It is only recently that they have determined its expansion speed and thus its age, but I am not holding my breath as to how accurate their guess is: they calculated this by comparing two radio observations taken at different wavelengths, and their arguments that they are showing the same structure at different stages of the expansion seem of a rather qualitative more than quantitative nature.

Here's the full story (actually been published since mid-April).

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Maybe even a proof of the Gravity Force ? This is something scientists have been looking for quite some time …

Well, you know that you can never prove a theory, only disprove it… but as far as experimental tests are concerned, gravity is doing pretty well, isn't it? As demonstrated by the fact that apples fall to the ground and the Earth doesn't shoot off into space in a straight line. And the most recent incarnation of the theory of gravity, General Relativity, has been tested quite successfully again and again ever since the solar eclipse experiment of 1919, which verified the prediction that light would be deflected by gravity.

Edit: The wording of the NASA press release suggests that there have been much more recent radio observations - maybe this time with the same wavelength and resolution as the old images, which would take a lot of the systematic uncertainties out of the calculation? Maybe this is what all this is referring to.

A working build of Duke Nukem Forever?

NASA captures images of brilliant supernova

Originally Posted by HiddenX
NASA captures images of brilliant supernova

Even doctor who couldnt save us from that.

Heresy, the good Doctor can save us from anything!!