Your Purest Faith and The Brightest Bright.

Your Purest Faith and The Brightest Bright.

Does the Faith of Pope Benedict XVI Straddle the Universe?

The brightest of brights occurred 3 billion years prior to the Earth and Sun's formation, before humans had faith or a name for God or Universe. . .Here we can test your faith, a little, at least. We know Earth and Sun to be 4.5 billion years old, so this explosion took place 7.5 billion years ago, 7.5 billion light years away -- "half" way across the universe in which we live.

Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler, et al.
The Brightest Bright (so far)

NASA's 10 million galaxies comparison is not precise, but with a look at the links, the enormity of the burst can be approached. This was the "big time." These are the kinds of explosions that make living things bask in an awesome "numinous" and yet intelligently quiver in fear.

I will show below, in a simple computation that this was far, far, brighter than 1 million galaxies. References included and links will show the reader that most of the energy produced by this single burst was released in the Gamma-ray and X-ray portions of the spectrum -- and were of a scale of multiple factors of the energy released in the visible range.

Image: http://www.swift.ac.uk/xrt_curves/00306757/ University of Leicester, UK

Intervention

With the Brightest of Brights, and Large Faiths Straddling the Universe, where is Life to be? That is not a rhetorical question. Is your faith in truth able to accommodate the scale of the universe, and its true age?

For Supernova 1987A some of the computations yielded the following energy values for output: Gamma Rays 1.9x10⁴⁰ erg/s and proton Luminosity of ~ 1.2x10⁴² erg/s

Images:NASA, and ESA, Hubble, Supernova 1987A a very very quiet explosion by comparison with GRB's, and especially with the Brightest of Brights.

The Brightest Bright -- and -- Tests of Faith

Astronomical Superlatives. What are they? Do they test one's faith? Your Faith?

In the realm of astronomy the oldest science the advent of satellites in space, above the atmosphere, to help us see the universe -- has caused the "realm" to be filled with "superlatives." These superlatives are certainly a case of being suddenly given "a look" at what has long existed, but now with a great many "new pairs of eyeglasses."

It is not yearly, but almost weekly that we learn of the newest brightest, farthest, largest, smallest -- to date, "yet discovered" object in the known universe.

It is less than a century since our species realization that many nebulous "nebulae" were "island universes"; were Galaxies; far far away, and full of stars. Stars just like the stars in the Milky Way.

The photography of spectra coincident with stationary laboratory spectra found every object moving away from us; away from us and each other. A universe expanding. In the last hundred years, only a very few of the older established "belief systems" have accommodated the expansion of both our view points and our view of the universe.

The Vatican Observatory, for example, with their sponsorship of rigorous scientific research in astronomy and physics seems to be moving their dogma in line with their grasp of a vast and old universe. Most Vatican scientists find their faith is unshaken. Astronomical scales and times are not at odds to all investigators.

http://www.deepspace4.com/pages/science/vaticanobservatory/vaticanobservatory.htm

It was Pope Gregory XIII who realized the need for an observatory to help reform the calender -- the calender which we use now --the Gregorian Calendar.

How about Extraterrestrials?

October 8, 1995, Vatican Priest Monsignor Corrado Balducci while on Italian National Television, RAI, said: “Extraterrestrials do exist.”

And there was, of course, Physicist Enrico Fermi's Question: "Where are They?

That too, is a faith. But in Europe -- a transformation occurring with the Reformation included a very wide consideration of other intelligences in the universe.

One valid fear of many Fundamentalist's (Christians, or Muslims) and their depth of faith is that such a vision, such a view into the nearly endless black vastness, could dispel myopia and a species-borne short-sightedness, and draw followers, or ignorant believers away from the simplistic acceptance of what funds and feeds these Fundamentalist's evangelical "fire and brimstone."

These new vistas and perspectives are frightening to some. For some of us, it tests our faith. For all of us -- it describes our ignorance.

Yes. Faith Can Be Powerful. And So Can Truth

Incredible strength and conviction can also be seeded along with an enduring superlatively powerful faith that -- with the eyes and mind -- it is possible to read within the universe all of God's messages and laws.

One thing coming from this effort is the knowledge of what is, is.

Could it be that God's Laws work the same everywhere?

What was once considered a slow, quiet, relatively changeless and tame universe has become recognized as a very dynamic and immense domain of incredibly energetic events, in some cases acting catastrophically violent, like a locked pair of tectonic plates breaking in a major earthquake. In astronomy, and over vast spatial distances and times, incredible energies burst forth from matter transformed. These explosive events are sometimes incredible engines of Creation, synthesizing in nuclear fireplaces and upon forges billions of degrees hot, the heavy and exotic atoms and isotopes we see as part of the natural world. These events become of are resultant incredible tools and they are intrinsic to the universe. These events and their consequences are a part of the writing and message of what is real. Of what is, is.

Aren't we special? Oh! Ye men of little Faith! And women, especially, too. Purest Faith?

It surprised many of the faithful that the reinstatement of Galileo occurred. Especially since his observations were simply "denied" by an ignorant clergy of the time. (These ignorant ones would not "believe" what they could see! Many people are like that, saying my beliefs preclude me seeing that. As if they are blind!) That is only one example where religion and science are coming together in a system of faith.

Has your religious belief enfolded what is known scientifically?

Or like a fundamentalist's denial of what God has writ as fossils in the rocks (written in stone, so to speak) denial of the tracks of evolution. A true blind person might deny the existence of his own Great-Great Grand Mother; or that the modern horse evolved to larger sizes from their original stature as eohippus. But with greater fear, to mortally terrorize those that would trade your money for their belief -- what if humans evolved without the invocation or touch of some divine special universe-straddling being? What if humanity was not at the center of . . .?

Learning that the Earth was not at the "center" of anything (everything) or that man may not exist at an exalted position with respect to some "dominion over the World"-idea within religious dogma now practiced, was surely a rude learning experience for many. In fact, when there occurred a "learning experience" that denied what was "believed" it was necessary to concoct an evil devil being that God created to test the souls of the faithful. This evil entity destroyed the innocence by delivering fruit from the tree of knowledge that forever placed in the otherwise innocent, that spark of blackest fire, that original "sin" impossible to remove because it was built in but that could be expunged with an act of faith.

Normal beings with the knowledge of logic might follow what was being learned "above" the pure dogma of what was given as scriptural fact representing reality. That trade-off undermined both the economy of blind belief and the continuity of it to generate a cash flow in the sense of scriptural banking.

When the ideas of future value and the compounded interest necessary to obtain them were questioned -- credit or belief in the existence of heaven or infinite wealth are threatened. Surely this be the work of the devil. If you think bankers have no faith or fears or are spiritual lackeys, just check into their false claims of value -- where indeed the material overpowers the spiritual every time. (And yet you hear them profess they are not the devil spawn -- they just believe in some different aspects of God. The God of something for nothing, pretending "values of good and God" are measured numerically on some devil's exponential scale.)

"They lie, they scheme, they cheat and steal,
and they go to church on Sunday. And while it's true
that some fear God, they all fear Mrs. Grundy."

Learning that the universe existed on both a temporal and physical scale tiny and immense, and far outside human experience, was a further shock to many.

In this Brightest Bright, this test of tests, the goal here will be to face and address your own inner demons and your own beliefs, and determine for your self -- your faith.

Does Your Faith Straddle the Universe?

It is a question, "simple." It logically and simplistically implies another question.

How Large and Powerful Is Your God?

Does your God, indeed, straddle the universe?

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The only thing an Astronomer has as meat and grist for the scientific process of discovery and understanding -- with which to sort out the nature of things nearby or faint and distant -- is light. Below, in a table the different energies and wavelengths where with the Astronomer sees are arrayed to show some of their characteristics.

If YOU see it, do you believe it? If you touch it, or taste it, or smell it, or hear it, or SEE it -- Do you believe? Or do you think God would trick you? That is, create a Devil entity to suck your soul away from heaven and infinite wealth through something that took your faith away from spiritual compounded interest?

Do you need a system of faith or belief? And which system is this you want to believe in? The money changers? The compounded interest Heaven Builders. Or do you want tangible consistency, a system testable and universal -- every one reading the same physical scripture?

Astronomers are just as faithful. They also believe that the Universe can be seen heard felt smelled and touched. But mostly they look and they "see."

The Astronomers also have their priests and clergy exploring the thoughts that God(s) allow(s) them. That the Universe can also be "thought about" and models of it constructed and tested. The "tests" consist of comparing the models and their predictions of appearance with what actually "appears," is observed, and measured.

All this is from what "anyone can see . . ." and with that sight and insight, begin to understand.

+++++++++

Image:NASA, E.L. Wright (UCLA), COBE,DIRBE, NASA From Earth orbit, in light just a little too red for humans to see, the image captures the center of the milky way and our home galaxy's plane.
==================

IMAGE M.F. Skrutskie (UMass; Principal Investigator, 2MASS), J.M. Carpenter (Caltech), R. Hurt (IPAC/Caltech)

This shows the Milky Way Galaxy, our home Galaxy, as well as the rest of the visible universe in the infrared at a wavelength of 2 microns. It also shows the "entire sky." The Milky Way, with its linear glow predominates in this rendition -- because we are "inside" it looking out -- and we are surrounded by it. "Below" the galactic plane, the Large and Small Magellanic "clouds" are clearly visible. Less visible is the rest of the universe--but it is out there.

Some energy scales might become clearer with this table:

Electromagnetic Radiation Spectrum
Region	Wavelength (Angstroms)	Wavelength (nanometers)	Wavelength (centimeters)	Frequency (Hz)	Energy (eV)
Radio	> 109	> 108	> 10	< 3 x 109	< 10-5
Microwave	109 - 106	108 - 105	10 - 0.01	3 x 109 - 3 x 1012	10-5 - 0.01
Infrared	106 - 7000	105 - 700	0.01 - 7 x 10-5	3 x 1012 - 4.3 x 1014	0.01 - 2
Visible	7000 - 4000	700 - 400	7 x 10-5 - 4 x 10-5	4.3 x 1014 - 7.5 x 1014	2 - 3
Ultraviolet	4000 - 10	400 - 1	4 x 10-5 - 10-7	7.5 x 1014 - 3 x 1017	3 - 103
X-Rays	10 - 0.1	0.1 - 0.01	10-7 - 10-9	3 x 1017 - 3 x 1019	103 - 105
Gamma Rays	< 0.1	< 0.01	< 10-9	> 3 x 1019	> 105

With nuclear reactions, Gamma radiation is produced.

Gamma ray bursts were first discovered in the 1967. The Curies are credited with the beginning of understanding of x-rays and after another half century, scientists understood that where gamma ray emissions occurred scientists knew nuclear level events were happening. Gamma rays are only associated with events that happen at the nuclear level, at the atomic level, inside the core of the atomic nucleus. We knew gamma ray were produced during radioactive decay and when they occurred prodigiously, if briefly, they occurred in atomic bombs, and in hydrogen bombs.

Hang on to your Faith -- otherwise You can get lost here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_bursts

This data was withheld from the general scientific community for a long time, as part of the classified data of the middle cold-war era by DOD. The gamma ray detection devices were military/intelligence devices to be part of the nuclear test ban monitoring -- done by military satellites. At first for maybe a couple of days, it was thought the "soviets" must be breaking the test ban treaty almost daily. After a few days, it was clear these were not terrestrial gamma ray sources being detected. They were coming from somewhere else. They were just out there in the "zoo."

You might enjoy reading about Israel and South Africa and nuclear weapons?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Incident#cite_note-ad_hoc-0

Here is a recently declassified description of one of the earlier satellite detections. (VELA)

We still do not know what this gamma ray burst was, if anything. It is quite interesting. While it relegates the most violent explosions in the universe to "zoo events" (yes, this is military intellect dealing with the real world.) it also shows there is a difference in signal between the long and short GRBs. Nuclear weapons sources of Gamma rays are really fast bursts. The duration in time corresponds to the scale of the source. (bombs are tiny, stellar or astronomical GRB's are enormous. Neutrino's for example, when produced in a star's supernova core would have a longer time signature than a hydrogen bomb -- simply because a star's exploding core in a supernova (even) has physical dimensions larger than our tiny weapons. But GRB's are more complex than that simple scale version.

From link in Wikipedia.

http://foia.abovetopsecret.com/VELA_SATELLITE/THE_VELA_INCIDENT/REPORTS/AD_HOC_REPORT_SEPT_23_1980.pdf

If you read this you will see the graphic and other data important to the event. Many scientist thought GRB's were within the Milky Way Galaxy.

Image:NASA

The plane band in the image is the Milky Way Galaxy. There are plenty of energetic Gamma Rays associated with the galaxy, but no "bursts" such as Gamma Ray Bursts were being detected.

In the first satellites to detect these high energy events, there was no directionality at all associated with detections. It took time to design build and launch equipment that could detect from where these gamma rays were coming.

Theories ranging from interstellar starship emissions within the Milky Way to exotic nuclear process occurring on the edge of physic's grasp of the real world were placed before the growing scientific school of high-energy physics. Some theories placed the sources at cosmological distances, and posited that the explosions were not exotic, just energetic. Really, really energetic.

Illustration: Image:Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; Spectrum: NASA/CXC/N.Butler et al.

A 21-hour Chandra observation of the afterglow of the gamma-ray burst GRB 020813 revealed an overabundance of elements characteristically ejected by the supernova explosion of a massive star. The afterglow is thought to be produced by the interaction of a jet of high-energy particles with the expanding supernova shell.

As technological progress provided, satellites were built and launched that detected the direction to the gamma ray sources. These first primitive pointers gave astronomers directions to areas of the sky where nothing was detected that was clearly related to a source of gamma ray emissions.

It took 30 years to locate the first "possible" remnant of a gamma ray burst. It took communications from the detector to the ground to be able to swing a LARGE enough telescope quickly enough toward the point in the sky where the burst of gamma rays came from.

This is a full sky depiction of the detections by BATSE (Burst and Transient Source Experiment), and the random patterning suggests these events are cosmological -- since they are not stuck in the direction of the galactic plane, and none correlate with nearby galaxies. For a long time, and in all cases, the bursts had been invisible to even large telescopes since tight coordinates were not available to allow telescopes to be able to point rapidly toward them to discover what they were.

Where in the sky these bursts have appeared:

Image:NASA, This is an "all sky" plot of BATSE Detections (Burst "A"nd Transient Source Experiment)

There Is Light

BEPPO-SAX

The first positive identification of a Gamma Ray Burst and an image of a physical object associated with it:

Image: NASA, Hubble Space Telescope GRB970228A The first optical component of a GRB

NASA: Hubble Space Telescope image of the February 28th [1997] burst location. The fuzzy patch of light to the lower left of the bright burst has been identified as a distant galaxy.

NASA--"Analysis of the HST images of the February 28 burst revealed the burst object is associated with a faint, fuzzy patch of light dwarfed by the brighter emission of the GRB source. This faint extended emission is presumed by many scientists to be a 'host' galaxy from within which some cataclysmic event led to the GRB. The unmatched resolution of the Hubble telescope allowed astronomers to determine that the source of the burst does not lie at the center of the faint galaxy, but is offset, most likely in the disk population of normal stars. This would seem to rule out the possibility that the bursts are powered by massive black holes at the center of galaxies and suggests the products of typical stellar evolution like colliding neutron stars as GRB candidates. A galaxy like our own Milky Way could produce a bursting object every few million years, an explosion that for a few seconds out shines the entire galaxy."

(This NASA comment was early in the detection process.)

Image: NASA, SWIFT, detector of highly energetic events, and higher frequency emanations

"The X-ray Telescope (XRT) and Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) have co-aligned fields-of-view, both within the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) field-of-view, so that any source can be observed in all three wavebands.

When a GRB occurs, the BAT is the first of Swift's instruments to detect it. Within about 10 seconds of the burst trigger, the BAT produces a burst localization, which is transmitted to ground observers. In addition, the BAT's position is fed to the Swift spacecraft actuators so a slew can be performed, bringing the GRB into the XRT and UVOT's fields-of-view.

Within a minute after a burst, the XRT refines the BAT position. The UVOT produces an even-more accurate localization after about 200 seconds. Meanwhile, the BAT obtains a picture of how the gamma-ray emission evolves over time. X-ray spectra are available after about 20 minutes, and the UVOT filters complete their cycles after about 2 hours. Together, these observations provide a clear picture of the GRB and its afterglow over time in three distinct wavebands.

While not engaged in observations of a new GRB, Swift's telescopes perform preprogrammed observations, which include long-term follow-up of GRBs as well as other science." -- NASA

http://swift.sonoma.edu/resources/multimedia/song/

Astrophysicists can also sing! Listen to the Swift song!

http://swift.sonoma.edu/resources/multimedia/song/swiftmono.mp3

Here are the words! http://swift.sonoma.edu/resources/multimedia/song/songtrans.html

This site has pertinent videos of the Swift satellite.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/multimedia/

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Image: NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center

The host galaxy's nucleus appears to the left of the arrow. A supermassive blackhole is unlikely to be the source of the energy for the GRB, since the really big black holes appear to reside in the center of a galactic nucleus. You should think about this. It means out there away from galactic centers, like where there are stars. . .maybe out as far as we are from the center of the Milky Way, these monster explosions can occur. What are they?

NASA: "Mark Metzger, a Caltech astronomy professor, said he was thrilled by the result. "When I finished analyzing the spectrum and saw features, I knew we had finally caught it. It was a stunning moment of revelation. Such events happen only a few times in the life of a scientist." For a few seconds the burst was over a million times brighter than an entire galaxy."

What that means -- if you let yourself think about it -- is that it was an explosion, putting into its surroundings immense quantities of energy that may have had very substantial effects, locally. Rezalize that "Locally," is a very large volume of space around one of these monstrous explosions. We are talking large Galactic volumes; billions of stars.

Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Tanvir (University of Leicester), and A. Fruchter (STScI

NASA text---"Peering across 7.5 billion light-years and halfway back to the Big Bang, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the fading optical counterpart of a powerful gamma ray burst that holds the record for being the intrinsically brightest naked-eye object ever seen from Earth. For nearly a minute this single star was as bright as 10 million galaxies. Hubble Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) images of GRB 080319B, taken on Monday, April 7, show the fading optical counterpart of the titanic blast. The object erupted in a brilliant flash of gamma rays and other electromagnetic radiation at 2:12 a.m. EDT on March 19, and was detected by Swift, NASA's gamma ray burst watchdog satellite. Immediately after the explosion, the gamma ray burst glowed as a dim 5th magnitude "star" in the spring constellation Bootes. Designated GRB 080319B, the intergalactic firework has been fading away ever since then. Hubble astronomers had hoped to see the host galaxy where the burst presumably originated, but were taken aback that the light from the GRB is still drowning out the galaxy's light even three weeks after the explosion. This is particularly surprising because it was such a bright GRB initially. Previously, bright bursts have tended to fade more rapidly, which fits in to the theory that brighter GRBs emit their energy in a more tightly confined beam. The slow fading leaves astronomers puzzling about just where the energy came from to power this GRB, and makes Hubble's next observations of this object in May all the more crucial. Called a long-duration gamma ray burst, such events are theorized to be caused by the death of a very massive star, perhaps weighing as much as 50 times our Sun. Such explosions, sometimes dubbed "hypernovae," are more powerful than ordinary supernova explosions and are far more luminous, in part because their energy seems to be concentrated into a blowtorch-like beam that, in this case, was aimed directly at Earth. The Hubble exposure also shows field galaxies around the fading optical component of the gamma ray burst, which are probably unrelated to the burst itself.

-----------------------
Some of the Pro's associated with Swift provide these for GRB 080319B.

Redshift of z = 0.937

the isotropic energy release is E (isotropic) ~1.32x10^54 erg, (GCN 7482)

the maximum luminosity is (L (isotropic) max ~9.67x10^52 erg/s (GCN 7482)

The corresponding beaming corrected energy is 1.3 x 10^52 ergs.(GCN 7567)

E (isotropic) = 1.32 +/- 0.03 x 10^54 ergs (log E (isotropic) = 54.12) (GCN 7627)

E jet = 2.11 +/- 0.30 x 10^52 erg (log E_jet = 52.3) (GCN 7627)

================+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Below are some of my calculations:

Note: This is a simple computation of "absolute magnitude" in the visible light spectrum we see -- and uses parsecs, by dividing 7.5 billion light years by 3.26 light years per parsec. The result is simply from the relationship of observed magnitude (brightness) and, in this case, the distance as gotten from the "z" red-shift.

M = Absolute Magnitude
m = observed magnitude
D = distance

M = m - 5((log₁₀ D_L) -1)

M = +5.76 -5 x( (log₁₀ 2.3 x 10⁹) - 1)

M = +5.76 - 5 x (9.36184366)-1)

M = (+5.76 -41.80921)

M = -36.05

Absolute Magnitude GRB 080319B = -36.05 as seen from earth.

This is what the visual magnitude(brightness) of this object would be at a distance of 10 parsecs. (32.6 light years)

-36.05 from a quick and dirty computation as above is considerably lower than the values the pros compute using the "brightness" of the gamma ray and x-ray luminosities. There is little doubt that the absolute AB magnitude of -38 makes this the brightest object yet detected.

Radiation obeys the inverse square relationship, so that if we were in a flat Euclidean universe this works out to an absolute magnitude of approximately -36.05, making this object, GRB 080319B for a small span of time, a bright flash bulb visible from every point in an expanding universe.

The Sun, at 1 A.U. (93 million miles), is of "apparent magnitude" ~ -26.5 and the Sun brightness on a clear day is palpable and you can certainly feel its warming radiation. Meaning that at a distance of 32.6 light years this object appears to be 9.35 magnitude steps brighter than the Sun. (That's 5495 times as bright as the Sun.)

That is, at a distance of 32.6 light years this GRB appears at least 5495 times the luminosity of the Sun as it appears 93,000,000 miles away.

But if you compare the actual brightness, as though the Sun were placed at the same 32.6 light years, where its apparent magnitude would be about +4.7 the magnitude difference is 40.75, meaning an energy output of at least 2.512^40.75, which is prodigious.

HOW MUCH was the total energy output in those 30 seconds that corresponds to the "visible" afterglow?

2.512^40.75 = 19,989,417,045,518,816.87 or call it 20 quadrillion times (20 x10¹⁵) the Sun's output. That output occurred over the course of about 30 seconds. 20x10¹⁵ x 30 = 600x10¹⁵ times the Sun's output.

Sun's output = 3.844x10³³ ergs/ second

Energy = 600 x 10¹⁵ x 3.844 x 10³³ ergs/sec = 2.31 x 10⁵¹ ergs

How much Mass was transformed to Energy?

M = E / c²

Mass = 2.31x10⁵¹ ergs / 898,755,178,736,817,640,000 cm²/s² = 2,570,221,629,483,858,578,322,147,818,798.9 grams

=2.6x10 ³⁰ grams or 2.6x10²⁴ tons (Mass quantity of Matter transformed to Energy)

Now the Sun's mass is about 2x10²⁷ tons, which is roughly 1000 times the mass of the planet Jupiter, since Jupiter's mass is about 1.9x10²⁴ tons . . .

2.6x10²⁴ tons / 1.9x10²⁴ tons = ~1.4 times the mass of Jupiter.

The titanic explosion of GRB 080319B was of order 2.31x10⁵¹ ergs, or about 1000^th the mass of the Sun transformed to energy in the visible portion of the spectrum.

Now, my computations only dealt with the "visible spectrum" of light for 30 seconds.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0803/0803.3215v1.pdf

J. S. Bloom, et al.

This Gamma Ray Burst 080319B was exceptional. On page 3 of the pdf linked to just above, you can readily see that the light-grayish BAT gamma-ray detections appearing at the top of the plot corresponds to a "magnitude" scale with nearly +2.1 or perhaps higher but a part of the gamma-ray burst -- that plateau -- averages perhaps mag ~ 2.6 or so for ~40 seconds before it plunges to mag ~5.4 and starts a slower decline; the X-ray and gamma-ray decay are reasonably consistent in decline where data is displayed.

The inverse square law works for gamma radiation too!

From my calculations above, I obtain a "visible light" Absolute Magnitude GRB 080319B = -36.05 as seen from earth. This is straight forward (and very simplistic) but indicates the transformation of ~1.4 times the mass of Jupiter (2.6 x 10 ²⁴ metric tons of matter.)

If we were to use the plus +2.6 gamma-ray apparent magnitude for the raw brightness instead of +5.76 in the visible range, the Absolute Magnitude via the simplistic formulation would calculate like this:

M = m - 5((log₁₀ D_L) -1)

M = +2.6 -5 x( (log₁₀ 2.3 x 10⁹) - 1)

M = +2.6 - 5 x (9.36184366)-1

M = (+2.6 -41.80921)

M = -39.21

Comparing the absolute magnitude of GRB080319B in gamma-rays to arrive at a scale of energy output we will again use the Sun, with it's Absolute Magnitude of +4.7 and calculate the difference. The magnitude difference between Absolute Magnitude(M_gbr)-39.21 and Absolute Magnitude (M_sol) +4.7 = 43.91 magnitude steps, so the energy output is 2.512^43.91 times the energy output of the Sun.

2.512^43.91 = 366,437,574,647,833,273.5 times the Sun's glow.

This is a factor of 366.4 quadrillion Sun's-worth of energy output.

That means GRB080319B shined with an equivalent of energy = 366.4 quadrillion suns, or the equivalent of about 3.7 million Milky Way galaxies, given each galaxy has 100 billion stars as bright as the Sun.

How much energy? By the BAT detector's gamma-ray magnitudes, from page three of the Bloom, et al. graphic, page 3? In that ~ first minute? (see Pg 6, sec 3.1)

We take the Sun's output and multiply it by 3.66 x 10¹⁷ times the ~ seconds of output of ~58.5 seconds . . .

3.844 x 10³³ ergs/second x 366.4 quadrillion x 58.5 seconds =8.24 x 10⁵²
ergs (note this assumes an average gamma-ray magnitude of +2.6 for the entire 58.5 seconds.)

~ 8.24 x 10⁵² ergs in gamma rays of (15 -- 350keV); which in itself implies a transformation of how much matter? How much Mass was transformed to get 8x10⁵²ergs energy?

E = M c²

c = 299,792,458 m/s. c = 29,979,245,800 cm/s. (This is actually a "scientific definition")

c² (in cgs system, so we can convert ergs to grams) = 898,755,178,736,817,640,000

M= E/c²

M_grams = 8.2402283161356859546646345034216 x10⁵² / 898755178736817640000

M_grams = 91,684,904,978,429,848,041,237,558,794,807 grams

M_grams = 91.6x10³⁰ grams

The Sun's Mass is about 2x10³³ grams

The release of 8.24x10⁵² ergs means a mass of 4.58% of the sun's mass was transformed to energy. . .

M_{Metric tons} =91684904978429848041237558.794807

M_{Metric tons} = 91.6x10²⁴

Jupiter's mass is 1.9 x ²⁴ metric tons.

Which works out to be 48.26 times the mass of Jupiter transformed into gamma radiation in about 1 minute.

If one looks at the light curve posted by Bloom, et al. and the energies I have used to calculate these figures, you see that it has considerable "area" of energy production beneath the light energy curves.

To simplify energy computations, astronomers are always looking at an exponential power curve which characterizes the laws of the universe, "fits" the light curve and also allows a summary of the total energy, by calculation of the area under the curve boundary, to be accomplished. Sometimes these power law fits, describing the slope of the dimming yield easy convenient calculation. I will not get into the curve fitting, but by use of digital pixel counts of the area below the curve, the total quantity of area can be made and the total energy output summed. In the calculation below, I trust the total energy was figured that way.

The value of 1.32x10⁵⁴ergs as the isotropic energy release (from Golenetskii, S., Aptekar, R., Mazets, E., Pal’shin, V., Frederiks, D., & Cline, T. 2008, GCN Circular 7482 ) is considerably more matter transformed to energy than so far computed, but let's use it.

The amount of matter, that is, it's mass -- transformed to the energy of 1.32x10⁵⁴ergs can be calculated via Einstein's mass energy relationship.

M= E/c²

M = 1.32x10⁵⁴ergs/sec / 898755178736817640000 (cm/sec)²

M = 1.468698x10³³ grams

Or 73.4% of the Sun's Mass, POOF! turned to energy, and unleashed.

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Again, referring to: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0803/0803.3215v1.pdf

Observations of the Naked-Eye GRB 080319B: Implications of Nature’s Brightest Explosion
J. S. Bloom1,2, D. A. Perley1, W. Li1,
N. R. Butler1, A. A. Miller1, D. Kocevski1, D. A. Kann5,
R. J. Foley1, H.-W. Chen3, A. V. Filippenko1, D. L. Starr1,4,
B. Macomber1, J. X. Prochaska6, R. Chornock1, D. Poznanski1, S. Klose5
1 Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411.
2 Sloan Research Fellow.
3 Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.
4 Las Cumbres Global Telescope Network, 6740 Cortona Dr. Santa Barbara, CA 93117.
5 Th¨uringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Sternwarte 5, D-07778 Tautenburg, Germany.
6 University of California Observatories/Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz,
CA 95064.

This paper outlines the observations of GRB080319B , and the energy received from it, here at Earth.

Perhaps, there have been larger, and perhaps, nearer explosions -- whose energy "fronts" have passed by this world of ours in the long past of this planet -- since the Sun and Earth and the planets are 4.567 billion years old, that is a long enough time to expect energetic events to have occurred, and the voice of their light to have passed this way.

As a superlative, however, nothing else yet observed has been as energetic, though some have been very close to the energy of GRB080319B. None have been "nearby," fortunately.

I encourage you to read the "ruminations" the above authors present in their conclusions on page 13 of this paper. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0803/0803.3215v1.pdf

They point out that at a distance of a redshift of z = 0.17, the distance of the nearby most "non-underluminous gamma-ray burst" to date, (about 2.2 billion light years away) GRB080319B would appear about as bright as the brightest stars in our sky. That is magnitude 1.

Herewith: A Possible Reaffirmation of Your Faith!

The authors also suggest that if GRB080319B were to burst in our own galaxy, at a distance of 32,600 light years (10kpc) -- ignoring the absorption and diminishing of the light along the line of sight in the plane of the Milky Way in the optical wavelengths, the optical flash would peak at magnitude about - 28.5, (minus 28.5 magnitude) at least twice the brightness of the Sun. (As above, this 'flash' would last only a few minutes, and could be devastating to many plants; those that could not run into the shade.)

They go on to say that such an event is extremely unusual — and that the Galactic GRB rate is probably no greater than 1 per 100,000 to 1,000,000 years. The likelihood of a "jet" pointed, or collimated and aimed toward Earth is only about 1%. (Podsiadlowski et al. 2004; see also Stanek et al.2006)

So how many years would it take to have a statistical chance of being close to one of these GRB's, say in our own Milky Way Galaxy which was to point at us in its death ray gunsight?

GRB080319B is in the family of the brightest 0.1% of GRBs ever observed, making the rate probably less than 1 per 10 billion to 100 billion years. "unlikely to have ever happened even over the long timescale of geological [astronomical] history [in our galaxy], and certainly not a spectacle we can expect to witness anytime soon."

For something like GRB080319B, I must agree it is pretty unlikely to have ever happened even over the time scale of geological history [4.5 billion years], here, nearby, and certainly . . . well, it would be unusually improbable -- after all, we have been observing the universe with unbiased instruments for over a century! It is amazing what we have learned and know! [Yeah. it would be better to have a 100,000 year-long observational history of GRB's to refine the danger.]

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Image: Chandra, Harvard, NASA

It appears we are safe statistically from one of the 1 in 1000 superluminous GRBs!

Is there anything we know of in the Milky Way that could become a Gamma Ray Burst?

Well, yes and no.

The qualified "yes:"

Yes. Eta Carina, 7,500-8,000 light years away. It has the mass for a really "big happening." Some estimates of it's mass range from 50 to 100 solar masses. Those kinds of masses just don't last long.

Here is a possible GRB in the making. Eta Carina.

Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (U. California, Berkeley) et al., and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
You CANNOT see this from the northern hemisphere, so maybe when it goes off you will not see it! It is 2.3 kpc away, and if GRB 080319B were to burst at that distance, it probably would not matter much which side of the planet you were on. The initial burst would be magnitude ~ -31.5, (minus 31.5) about 80 times brighter than the Sun. Even if it lasted a few minutes, a lot of life damage could be done.
And it appears 1 in 1000 is too rare to expect a major thing nearby. (But I must remind you. People DO win the lottery!)

Image: NASA

Image: NASA, and Jon Morse (University of Colorado), Kris Davidson (University of Minnesota)

NASA Text --"The furious expansion of a huge, billowing pair of gas and dust clouds are captured in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope comparison image of the super massive star Eta Carina.

To create the picture, astronomers aligned and subtracted two images of Eta Carina taken 17 months apart (April 1994, September 1995). Black represents where the material was located in the older image, and white represents the more recent location.

(The light and dark streaks that make an 'X' pattern are instrumental artifacts caused by the extreme brightness of the central star. The bright white region at the center of the image results from the star and its immediate surroundings being 'saturated' in one of the images.)

This difference image shows that material closer into the star (which is the bright blob at the image's center) is blasting into space more quickly than material farther from the star.

This picture is remarkable because most celestial objects barely change noticeably over a span of many years. Eta Carinae is a dramatic exception because it underwent a titanic explosion 150 years ago. The twin lobes show white outer edges as the ejected material expands into space at 1.5 million miles per hour.

For the first time, astronomers can track the motions of hundreds of small-scale structures in the lobes which will allow them to characterize precisely how the lobes are evolving. The new data may give clues as to how the lobes formed in the first place, and shed light on the bipolar phenomenon in general. The images were taken in violet light with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). The star is [thought to be] more than 8,000 light-years away." -- end, NASA excerpt.
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Will things on Earth be "Okay" after Eta Carina explodes?

Is 8,000 light years too close? It depends! Astronomers are certain Earth will not be in the line of fire from any Jet. It is believed the pole of Eta Carina's rotation is not lined up with Earth. (From the images, the rotation pole appears to be pointed 25^o to 40^o away from Earth. That does not mean we would be 100% safe, but it is believed the amount of radiation conveyed to space in our direction would be much smaller. It goes without saying, but soon Eta Carina will be a black hole.

Maybe it has already exploded -- and the burst is on its way, or it may not happen for 100,000 years or more.

It will explode.

It might "just" be a supernova -- but most astronomers don't think so.

Even if it isn't to be a GRB -- it might be the answer to Fermi's question. Imagine a single star sterilizing a volume equivalent space containing dozens of billions of stars and planet's.

How is your faith with respect to these?

GRB030329A, An extremely close (z=0.168), and therefore extremely bright GRB, had a clear supernova association. GRB 030329 was so bright that its gamma radiation ionized the Earth's upper atmosphere. 29 March 2003

Fermi's question has been thought about a great deal.

Where are they?

Even a third of a galactic radius away from a moderate GRB, planetary or space faring life is potentially endangered. For "ordinary" supernovae, a foolproof safe distance might be 800 light years, though for lesser supernovae, a distance of 300 light years might be sufficient.

We do not know what makes a GRB, but we think the aiming of jets toward us enhances their brightness. GRB 080319B could have been seen all the way across the universe. Not just half-way.

Cosmologically distant GRB's that set off the detectors we now have are going to eventually help us to understand the orders of magnitude more energetic bursts.

The more "familiar explosions" are not really yet well understood, but we have seen a statistically large enough number of them to classify them into general groupings according to their spectra (emissions and absorptions) and explosion red/blue shifts, their brightness decay (light curve), and the shape of that decay. And into two general classes of GRB's based on the light decay. The universe is large, and each explosion can yield information toward a fuller and broader understanding.

In the universe we "can detect," on average a supernova explodes every second, On average, every day, at least one GRB occurs. Those averages suggest an occurrence ratio of 1: 86,400 or call it 1 in a 100,000. In any single galaxy, like the Milky Way, where star formation rates are not very high, a supernova can be expected to occur once in a hundred years. Different galaxies have different star formation rates.

I have been anxiously anticipating getting to see a naked eye supernova in my lifetime. One like the 1054 explosion that formed the Crab Nebula, Or Kepler's or Tycho's. I thought odds were good that I would see a Milky Way Galaxy one by now! (half a century of actively watching.) The Large Magellanic Cloud supernova, in 1987 doesn't count! It was 167,000 light years away.

I hope to see one that reaches -6 or brighter magnitude, but not something like a GRB, nearby. If I do not get to see one, because I just couldn't /didn't live long enough, you keep your eyes open and watch in my place.

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Link to this page and scroll through the circulars; GRB's A,B,C,D are here and a lot more details. I have selected and posted here a few of the initial circulars.

http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/other/080319.gcn3

The initial trigger contact:

At 06:12:49 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and located GRB 080319B (trigger=306757). Swift slewed immediately to the burst. The BAT on-board calculated location is RA, Dec 217.926, +36.303 which is:

RA(J2000) = 14h 31m 42s
Dec(J2000) = +36d 18' 10"

with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment, including
systematic uncertainty). event.

The XRT (X-Ray Telescope) began observing the field at 06:13:49.7 UT, 60.5 seconds after the BAT trigger. XRT found a very bright fading, uncatalogued X-ray source located at RA, Dec 217.9196, +36.3041 which is equivalent to:
RA(J2000) = 14h 31m 40.7s
Dec(J2000) = +36d 18' 14.7"
with an uncertainty of 4.7 arcseconds (radius, 90% containment). This location is 18 arcseconds from the BAT onboard position, within the BAT error circle. No event data are yet available to assess possible redshift constraints using X-ray spectroscopy and the nH-z relation from Grupe et al. (2007).

UVOT (UltraViolet Optical Telescope) took a finding chart exposure of 400 seconds with the V filter starting 175 seconds after the BAT trigger. There is a candidate afterglow in the rapidly available 2.7'x2.7' sub-image. This position is consistent with the XRT error circle, but the source is so bright that a precise UVOT position is not possible due to saturation effects. The estimated magnitude is 11.5 with a 1-sigma error of about 0.5 mag. No correction has been made for the expected extinction of about 0.04 magnitudes.

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Keep the Faith. Or some Faith. Like something is real.