Space "firefly" resembles no known object

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

From New Scientist (http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14738-space-firefly-resembles-no-known-object.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news1_head_dn14738)



An object that brightened intensely and then faded back into obscurity over a period of about seven months is unlike anything astronomers have seen before, a new study reports.
The object, called SCP 06F6, was first spotted (http://space.newscientist.com/channel/astronomy/dn9360-enigmatic-object-baffles-supernova-team.html) in the constellation Bootes in February 2006 in a search for supernovae by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Nothing had been seen at its location before it started to brighten, and nothing was spotted after it dimmed. That suggests it is normally too faint to observe and that it brightened by at least 120 times during its firefly-like episode.
Stars are known to brighten dramatically when they explode as supernovae. But supernovae reach their maximum brightness after about 20 days, and this object took a leisurely 100 days to hit its peak.
The object's spectrum is also bizarre. It does not match that of anything seen in the mammoth Sloan Digital Sky Survey (http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14546-biggest-3d-galaxy-map-to-probe-dark-energys-history.html), which has mapped more than a quarter of the sky.

Near or far

The spectrum shows a handful of spectral lines, but when astronomers try to trace any one of them to an element – such as magnesium, the other lines fail to match up with known elements.
"Because we can't see anything we recognise in the spectrum, we can't tell if it's even in the galaxy or in another galaxy," says Kyle Barbary of the University of California, Berkeley, lead author of the new study.
If it's inside the galaxy, it might be a dim stellar ember called a white dwarf. White dwarfs can brighten suddenly when they steal matter from a nearby stellar companion or suck in matter from a disc of debris around them.
But that process of sucking in matter would have to happen in a "strange way" to explain the odd spectrum, Barbary says: "It would still leave something unanswered."
If the object lies outside the galaxy, explaining its provenance is no easier.
When its discovery was first reported in 2006, astronomer Stefan Immler of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, suggested to New Scientist that the object might be a very distant supernova, lying about 12 billion light years away.

Bell curve

If it was that distant, the expansion of the universe would relativistically draw out (http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13792-cosmic-time-warp-revealed-in-slowmotion-supernovae.html) a supernova explosion, making a 20-day event stretch out over a period of 100 days.
But Barbary says that idea is unlikely for two reasons. He and colleagues believe the object lies no farther than 11 billion light years away.
"If the transient were more distant than this, we would see signs of absorption from intergalactic hydrogen in the blue part of the spectrum," he told New Scientist. A supernova lying 11 billion light years away would cause a 20-day brightening event to stretch over just 70 days – a month shy of explaining the observations.
Secondly, observations show that the object's brightness faded at the same rate as it had initially risen – creating a symmetrical, bell-shaped "light curve". Supernovae typically have asymmetrical light curves – they fade much more slowly than they brighten.

'All bets are off'

"When I first heard about the 100-day rise about two years ago, I thought that this could be a distant supernova," Immler told New Scientist. "However, now that more results are in, the object is more enigmatic than ever."
"The biggest problem is that the distance is not known," Immler says. "If you can't figure out the distance, you are in trouble as an astronomer and all bets are off."
The team may try to re-observe the same region of space, just in case the object flares up again. "It's possible that it's a cyclical thing and would come back, but it would be good to know if it doesn't," Barbary says.
"At this point, there are a few possibilities that we have ruled out, but no possibilities that look particularly promising," he told New Scientist. "We are hoping someone else might have seen something similar or might be able to shed some light on it."
Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/apj/current) (forthcoming)

[Dean]

Interesting, thanks for posting this.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

How odd. It just shows how little we actually know about the universe!

[jake williams]

There's some seriously weird shit happening in space. I just came here from the "dark flow" thread. I should say that I'm very uncomfortable with "science skeptics" who think that "science" is some how all a conspiracy or a fraud or even just an honest mistake, I want to make clear that I don't take that position at all, I believe both that our scientific approach to understanding the universe is close to the best we have, and that its practitioners are very sincere. But I think weird shit has the capacity to challenge theories, and I think a lot more skepticism - scientific skepticism - is due even in regard to theories which "seem to work", especially those which only seem to work in limited circumstances, and especially those which seem very difficult to reconcile with other observed phenomena. While I think people stretch Occam's Razor far more than is appropriate, it seems to be the case that when you start adding complicated rules to a theory to describe weird shit that you can't really explain, you're going down the wrong path theoretically.

I should say this doesn't necessarily apply to this specific case, which without knowing more could be anything from a phenomenon which has never been observed but fits well into current understanding, to a new phenomenon which doesn't fit well into current understanding, to Jesus farting, to a measurement error or some other mistake in recognizing this as something we already understand. But the question should at least be raised I think, especially when you have a larger accumulation of contradictory data (I should say though that on this last point, science has a tendecy to ignore small amounts of contradictory data, and while I understand very well why this is the case, it may not be the best approach, it may be something we ought think about a little more).

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

But I think weird shit has the capacity to challenge theories, and I think a lot more skepticism - scientific skepticism - is due even in regard to theories which "seem to work", especially those which only seem to work in limited circumstances, and especially those which seem very difficult to reconcile with other observed phenomena.

The thing is though, is that we observe very strong evidence that some kind of universal expansion has/is occurring. The reason different models of the Big Bang such such as inflation theory exist is an attempt to explain observations not predicted by classical Big Bang theory. The primary evidence for some kind of Big Bang is unmistakeable, but something more sophisticated like inflation theory is needed to explain secondary observations that classical Big Bang models have failed to predict.

Note that while inflation theory can provide an explanation for the phenomenon mentioned in the article, few scientists actually predicted this sort of thing, whether they used inflation theory or more classical Big Bang models.


While I think people stretch Occam's Razor far more than is appropriate, it seems to be the case that when you start adding complicated rules to a theory to describe weird shit that you can't really explain, you're going down the wrong path theoretically.

As much as physicists love simplicity in their theories, achieving such simplicity in standard models is not nearly achieved as often as they would like. Take the so-called "Standard Model" of particle physics. While it undoubtedly "works" it is very "ugly" and doesn't take into account the gravitational force. No alternative to the Standard Model (such as Grand Unified Theories) has managed to topple it, and a unified theory of quantum gravity looks a very long way off considering the energies needed for experimental verification. As attractive as hypotheses like Superstring Theory, the support for it is purely mathematical at this point.

In other words, while there may indeed be a simpler, morre fundamental theory, our lack of knowledge perforce drives us to construct models that are in actual fact fairly complicated.


I should say this doesn't necessarily apply to this specific case, which without knowing more could be anything from a phenomenon which has never been observed but fits well into current understanding, to a new phenomenon which doesn't fit well into current understanding, to Jesus farting, to a measurement error or some other mistake in recognizing this as something we already understand.

The "Dark Flow" phenomenon appears to be compatible with inflation theory, a variant on the classical Big Bang model. The "cosmic firefly" phenomenon described in this thread seems in keeping with no known astronomical object, as it's brightness curve is unlike that of any supernovae we've come across.


But the question should at least be raised I think, especially when you have a larger accumulation of contradictory data (I should say though that on this last point, science has a tendecy to ignore small amounts of contradictory data, and while I understand very well why this is the case, it may not be the best approach, it may be something we ought think about a little more).

The universe is a big place - we have barely begun to probe it's secrets. At least that's my take on it.