The Big Blast
You know, for as much as we humans think we really have control over our planet, nature tends to remind us from time to time that we are just flyspecks in the vastness of space and energy. Take for example the amount of energy we get from the sun: 174.0 PetaWatts - (10^15 watts) which is the total power received by the Earth from the Sun. Now compare that to this news item.
From Slashdot: Astronomers are still speculating as to what could have caused an abnormally strong five millisecond burst to be detected six years ago when it completely saturated their recording equipment. From the article: 'The burst was so bright that at the time it was first recorded it was dismissed as man-made radio interference. It put out a huge amount of power (10^33 Joules), equivalent to a large (2000MW) power station running for two billion billion years.
Comments
Is that a heat measurement or TSI?
Posted by: Evan Jones | September 29, 2007 01:58 PM
It's going to take some new type of instrumentation at the USHCN sites to capture 5 ms global warming events.
Posted by: CO2Breath | September 29, 2007 02:57 PM
It that had happened anywhere in our galaxy, we would all be dead!
Posted by: John Andrews | September 29, 2007 04:42 PM
Love your site. Especially like the pictures of the weather stations and the graphs that accompany them! This does more for reality than anything this side of junkscience.com
Posted by: billadams | September 30, 2007 06:25 AM
A friend and I were discussing this kind of subject and I asked," If there WAS a " big bang" ,
what would have caused it?"
He replied," GOOD QUESTION! "
w.t.
Posted by: W.M. TUTHILL | November 23, 2007 06:19 PM