Biggest zap ever

[ToSeek]

Star's pulse of radiation is strongest ever

The brightest pulse of radiation ever seen has come from a pulsar nearly 12,000 light years away. Lasting less than 15 billionths of a second (15 nanoseconds), the burst was recorded by a massive radio telescope at Tidbinbilla in Australia.
...
At the point where the pulse was emitted “the electromagnetic field strengths would be capable of totally vaporising and ionising all known materials, shredding them into hot plasma”, says Wayne Cannon of York University in Toronto, Canada, though the pulse was harmless by the time it reached Earth.

[Russ]

Star's pulse of radiation is strongest ever

The brightest pulse of radiation ever seen has come from a pulsar nearly 12,000 light years away. Lasting less than 15 billionths of a second (15 nanoseconds), the burst was recorded by a massive radio telescope at Tidbinbilla in Australia.
...
At the point where the pulse was emitted “the electromagnetic field strengths would be capable of totally vaporising and ionising all known materials, shredding them into hot plasma”, says Wayne Cannon of York University in Toronto, Canada, though the pulse was harmless by the time it reached Earth.

I just tried your link and the site is down. What is the current hypothisis? Was it a starquake? Wobble from pression? Why only one, brief pulse from a pulsar?

[ToSeek]

"No one knows."

[Normandy6644]

"No one knows."

At least we're being specific. :wink:

[ChibiVader]

The link seems to be working for me.

Interesting stuff.

[Evan]

Someone is taking flash pictures.

[George]

Maybe it "burped" from a major consumption.

[earthman2110]

Not that I'm scared of a little radiation, but isn't that pretty close?

[JustAGuy]

Not that I'm scared of a little radiation, but isn't that pretty close?

Not really. 12,000 light years is a long, long, long way away. Long.

[earthman2110]

But arent most pulsars billions of light years away?

[Grey]

Star's pulse of radiation is strongest ever

They don't actually say how strong it was, though! They could have at least given us the power output, and if they wanted to be especially helpful, compare that to the power output of a typical pulse.

Edited to add:

Ah, here we go:
Giant Pulses from PSR B1937+21 with Widths 15 Nanoseconds and Tb 5 × 10^39 K, the Highest Brightness Temperature Observed in the Universe

And they think it's related to discharges in the polar cap region of the pulsar.

[ToSeek]

But arent most pulsars billions of light years away?

Most known pulsars are in our galaxy. You're probably thinking of quasars.

[George]

Not that I'm scared of a little radiation, but isn't that pretty close?

Don't forget the duration was less than 0.000000015 seconds. It has hard to get much of a tan regardless of it's energy level (unless it was very, very close, of course)

[Kaptain K]

Question;

I was under the impression that the (temporal) length of an event was constrained by relativity to the physical size of the origin.

In other words, does this mean that the emitting region was less than five meters across?

[Evan]

Good point. So, is this what happens when a 5 meter size nickel iron asteroid impacts the surface of a neutron star at good percentage of light speed?