The Carolinian Renaissance was protected from barbarians by a group of young nobles and peasants with extraordinary powers. They were led by a Jesuit monk named Francis Xavier.

Was the Earth hit by a gamma-ray burst 1235 years ago? The answer may be "yes"

The author certainly has located the exclamation point on his keyboard!

I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne: "Let my armies be the rocks and the trees - and the birds in the sky."

'The answer may be yes' is an awesome way to lend credibility to ridiculous questions, though, you have to admit.

Are Washington Redskins helmets made from the skulls of slaughtered Ojibwe? The answer may be yes...

RexTalionis: Fun Fact: Did you know that Charlemagne conquered the kingdom of the Lombards in 774 AD by turning into a 10 foot tall green rage monster?

He also wiped out the dinosaurs.

KiwDaWabbit: I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne: "Let my armies be the rocks and the trees - and the birds in the sky."


approves
/lol - fark threw away my first image but was cool with this one

And nothing fo value was lost...except maybe some carbon-12?

/wanted for questioning.

RexTalionis: Fun Fact: Did you know that Charlemagne conquered the kingdom of the Lombards in 774 AD by turning into a 10 foot tall green rage monster?

Forget about Charlemagne, how about all of the Vikings? Where do you think "berserking" was all about?

Just wait for Creationists to use this as an argument against carbon dating.

"See! All it takes is a burst of radiation from space (sent by the One and Only Lord Almighty His Infinite Wonderfulness) to completely mess up the amount of carbon in old stuff! The earth really is 6,000 years old. Take that, science!"

Gamma, Gamma Hey.

Arkanaut: RexTalionis: Fun Fact: Did you know that Charlemagne conquered the kingdom of the Lombards in 774 AD by turning into a 10 foot tall green rage monster?

Forget about Charlemagne, how about all of the Vikings? Where do you think "berserking" was all about?

Uh, so that didn't really make grammatical sense -- how about "What do you think 'berserking' was all about?"

A nearby exploding star, or supernova, is almost certainly not the culprit. To generate the energy needed to create the carbon and beryllium seen, it would have to have been less than 1000 light years away. That would've made it so bright it would've been visible in daylight! Also, no 1200-year-old supernova remnant has been detected, and it would be incredibly obvious if it existed (the Crab nebula is 1000 years old and more than 6000 light years way, for example, and is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the sky).

GaaAAAAh brain dead science reporting. The Crab Nebula is 7500 years old. It was detected 1000 years ago.

Scary tag? Hey subby everyone LIVED...

A GRB, in my galaxy? It's more likely than you think.

aint this news from last June?

WordsnCollision: [www.fanboy.com image 501x365]

/wanted for questioning.

ALWAYS wanted for questioning. You know how many temporal paradoxes he has on his record??????!?

Autistic Hiker: A nearby exploding star, or supernova, is almost certainly not the culprit. To generate the energy needed to create the carbon and beryllium seen, it would have to have been less than 1000 light years away. That would've made it so bright it would've been visible in daylight! Also, no 1200-year-old supernova remnant has been detected, and it would be incredibly obvious if it existed (the Crab nebula is 1000 years old and more than 6000 light years way, for example, and is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the sky).

GaaAAAAh brain dead science reporting. The Crab Nebula is 7500 years old. It was detected 1000 years ago.

But it's better to model things without a universal "now" in some cases, and instead to let "now" be an expanding sphere (expanding at the speed of light, of course). Which is clearly what the author had in mind, as opposed to being a careless and easily confused person.

The earth is hit by gamma ray bursts every day.

Didn't read the article.

I May Be Crazy But...: Autistic Hiker: A nearby exploding star, or supernova, is almost certainly not the culprit. To generate the energy needed to create the carbon and beryllium seen, it would have to have been less than 1000 light years away. That would've made it so bright it would've been visible in daylight! Also, no 1200-year-old supernova remnant has been detected, and it would be incredibly obvious if it existed (the Crab nebula is 1000 years old and more than 6000 light years way, for example, and is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the sky).

GaaAAAAh brain dead science reporting. The Crab Nebula is 7500 years old. It was detected 1000 years ago.

But it's better to model things without a universal "now" in some cases, and instead to let "now" be an expanding sphere (expanding at the speed of light, of course). Which is clearly what the author had in mind, as opposed to being a careless and easily confused person.

Perducci: Just wait for Creationists to use this as an argument against carbon dating.

"See! All it takes is a burst of radiation from space (sent by the One and Only Lord Almighty His Infinite Wonderfulness) to completely mess up the amount of carbon in old stuff! The earth really is 6,000 years old. Take that, science!"

In recent years C-14 dating has had to be recalibrated due to fluctuations in levels of carbon 14; older dates are wildly inaccurate. To use one example, the original dating for Clovis artifacts was about 2000 years off. Because scientists aren't retarded, they simply (well, not so simply, it was probably a colossal pain in the ass) compared C-14 dating to other dating methods and eventually made it an accurate dating tool, rather than throwing up their hands and saying God just doesn't want us to know stuff. Not that that would satisfy a creationist, I suppose, but nothing will, so fark 'em. The problem for serious people is that it is often unclear whether a carbon 14 date is calibrated, so a lot of archaeological papers contain errors.

Japanese trees
American and European trees

If only there were a way to get more samples, I envision a whole world of trees. We should start planting now for the next super space laser attack.

Perducci: Just wait for Creationists to use this as an argument against carbon dating.

"See! All it takes is a burst of radiation from space (sent by the One and Only Lord Almighty His Infinite Wonderfulness) to completely mess up the amount of carbon in old stuff! The earth really is 6,000 years old. Take that, science!"

Still doesn't explain the stars and galaxies we can detect many, many millions of light years away.

/They would do so much better if they concentrated on "God made all this using the tools He created when he created the Universe"
//still unexplained: how everyone can be descended from two people, and then later six people

Perducci: Just wait for Creationists to use this as an argument against carbon dating.

"See! All it takes is a burst of radiation from space (sent by the One and Only Lord Almighty His Infinite Wonderfulness) to completely mess up the amount of carbon in old stuff! The earth really is 6,000 years old. Take that, science!"

Wouldn't this mess things up in the opposite direction, though? If the amount of Carbon-14 suddenly increased 1200 years ago, this would imply that anything dated to be older than that would actually be much older than the test indicated.

What I find interesting about this finding is that gamma-ray bursts have for some time been a classic life-ending disaster scenario: the sort of thing that causes massive extinctions and ends nearly all life on Earth (or, depending on who you ask, potentially all of it). This hypothesis, if true, would mean that we got smacked at essentially point-blank range by one, but nothing much happened. Either that was one weak ass-gamma burst, or they aren't actually the massive threat once believed.

hdhale:
/They would do so much better if they concentrated on "God made all this using the tools He created when he created the Universe"
//still unexplained: how everyone can be descended from two people, and then later six people

I see you've never been to Alabama.

firemanbuck: Autistic Hiker: A nearby exploding star, or supernova, is almost certainly not the culprit. To generate the energy needed to create the carbon and beryllium seen, it would have to have been less than 1000 light years away. That would've made it so bright it would've been visible in daylight! Also, no 1200-year-old supernova remnant has been detected, and it would be incredibly obvious if it existed (the Crab nebula is 1000 years old and more than 6000 light years way, for example, and is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the sky).

GaaAAAAh brain dead science reporting. The Crab Nebula is 7500 years old. It was detected 1000 years ago.

If it's 1000 years old and 6000 light years away, we wouldn't be able to see it for another 5000 years.

Depends on your frame of reference. :v

Another way to think about things: "Now" is what we are observing. Nothing can move faster than the speed of light, so it's impossible for anything (gravity, etc) to impact anything beyond its light-cone, therefore it's not really correct to think of something happening "now" 1000 light years away to be observed 1000 years from now - it could also easily be argued that, from the perspective of observation and interactivity, "now" of something 1000 ly away is what we're observing to have occurred "1000 years ago."

This is likely what the article writer was attempting to describe.

Also, I'm terrible at explaining these sort of things, so that likely made very little sense.

And it would have to have been aimed right at us;

That's a big deal. The paper does agree that the rules of astrophysics may need some adjusting to fit this, to avoid relying on a ≤2.6σ event to explain it.
one would have to conclude that there are more (fainter) short GRBs than observed so far, and/or that there is another astrophysical population contributing to short GRBs, which was not yet fully recognized.

So the artist plays EVE?