Seeing the Universe Through Gamma-Ray Eyes

GLAST, the Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope, was launched into Earth orbit on June 11, 2008. Unlike the human eye, it can see gamma rays, a powerful form of light that is above the spectrum of visible light. GLAST will open new views of such celestial objects as gamma ray bursts, black holes, spinning neutron stars and jets of highly charged particles. It may even detect signs of dark matter. GLAST is a $690-million NASA project, a consortium of six countries and 14 U.S. research institutions. At Stanford, project members came from SLAC, a U.S. Energy Department lab; the Physics Department; the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory; and the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.

Stanford University:
http://www.stanford.edu/

Stanford News Service:
http://news-service.stanford.edu

Stanford GLAST News Coverage:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/june18/tele-061808.html

Stanford on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/stanforduniversity

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Technology
• astronomy
• universe
• space
• gamma
• rays
• sky
• partices
• of
• light
• energy
• galaxies
• telescope
• egret
• SLAC
• stars
• neutron
• radiation
• black
• holes
• extraction
• electron
• antimatter
• particles
• ray
• bursts

[spookyben]

The most amazing GRB discovery so far is the incredibly annoying horn section background noise that goes with it.

[XXxxmacxx]

i love space

[spookyben]

@mrrn100 That must be why most college science lectures have an erratic trumpeter brought in.......to help the kids concentrate....lol

[grunder20]

Man, what a spectacular presentation! Stunned by the beauty!

[JamesCizuz]

@vamparik

*Continued*

It's mass approachs infinity, which means it would require infinite energy to accelerate a particle to the speed of light, and more than infinite to accelerate it faster. This doesn't apply to massless particles such as a photon, since they are massless they require no energy to actually accelerate or move, so they are always moving at the speed of light. Only particles with negative mass can exceed the speed of light, IF they exist.

[JamesCizuz]

@vamparik Space does not expand "faster than light", it just obeys the inverse sqaure law, where two points expand away and every point is expanding away from every other part, meaning the farther the distance, the faster those points are moving away, but space is actually expanding relatively slow, yet "faster" then the speed of light. However speed of light only applies to particles with mass, because the faster a particle goes the more mass it gains, at speed of light it's mass is *continued*

[vamparik]

@Ananas85 if we never questioned theorys, we would still consider the sun as a golden disc, and we would still consider the world as flat. quantum mechanics are complicated at best, the speed of light is so far the fastest we can observe things going, space itself is expanding faster than the speed of light, soo, yeah

[Ananas85]

@GateMessenger instantly transfer information? so you do not believe in einstein or even the speed of light?

[GateMessenger]

Imaging old galaxies at the extents of the visible universe(12.8 billion light years away) does not suggest primordial galaxies it suggests the idea of seeing galaxies as they were in the past is wrong. Light is a wave spectrum until observed. When the source of the light is observed the wave collapses and instantly transfers the information of what it looks like in the now via quantum entanglement. The light never even travels. The electrons pop into existence right when viewing the source.

[mrrn100]

actually the superb music helped me to keep concentrated in the excellent explanation. Perhaps a more scaled version of the EM spectrum was in order. After all visible light is less then 1 million of percent part of the whole spectrum.

[plebshadowofra]

Good science, bad music