Starship Asterisk*

The gamma ray burst that reached visual magnitude 5 was judged by red shift to be 7.5 billion light years away. What I am curious about is whether anyone calculated the mass to energy conversion that was necessary to produce it. I know it would be full of assumptions, but it seems as though the energy released is greater than anything we have ever seen before.

I do not think it was the largest observed.

Incredible when you think about the energy released. Truly the largest most violent explosion known to exist. Every time you see one pause for a moment of silence.....

A back-of-the envelope calculation implies that it would be the equivalent of converting almost 1000 Earths into energy.

Correction: that would be 100 suns not earths.

No, 1000 Earths is about right (actually it was about 800 in my calculation, but that's practically 1000 ). GRBs are estimated to release around 10^44 joules or so of energy.

In my naivite I actually sent emails out to Brian Greene AND Steven Hawkin that contained GRB questions and guess what? I don't exist- d'uh! Anyway, IMO, generally speaking it seems that GRBs occurred somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-9 billion yrs. ago. I've seen the question of why there are none in our vicinity and I can only say that there probably were, billions of years ago,

So, for me it brings up two questions at least. Why did they occur during that time frame? AND was there enough combined force/pressure within the universe as a whole from these explosions to send the expansion of the universe beyond the point of no return by giving it that little extra push? I also keep working on the fact of time 'cause these bursts no longer exist at there origins, our bursts are there instead. If someone is there, they'll see 'em.

APOD: 2008 March 28 - Across the Universe
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080328.html

HEAPOW: 2008 March 24 - Home of the Whopper?
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/objec ... swift.html

Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) -> washington nasa observe cosmic explosion GammaRB (28Mar2008)
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... hp?t=13333

NASA -> Missions -> Swift -> GRBs -> 03.21.08
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift ... t_grb.html

EurekAlert -> 20 Mar 2008
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 032008.php

So if there is intelligent life oh say another million years distant a million years from now will they see it if its bright enough to travel that far? Now I know if we travel that direction the speed of light the light will still pass us the speed of light so I know we cant catch up with it, even if were there a million years from now unless we didn't have to make the trip we wouldnt see it. But if we were there a along would we see it ?