ESO to announce "unprecedented discovery" on October 16

[Mitchz95]

"ESO will hold a press conference on 16 October 2017 at 16:00 CEST, at its Headquarters in Garching, Germany, to present groundbreaking observations of an astronomical phenomenon that has never been witnessed before."

Edited October 11, 2017 by Mitchz95

[p1t1o]

Its always something like a pulsar that is pulsing with a new pattern/frequency, something like that.

Not that its aliens, but do aliens fall in the category of "astronomical phenomenon"?

[UmbralRaptor]

Going to guess an optical counterpart to a gravitational wave detection. (Probably not, since I don't think VIRGO and ESO have much overlap?)

And it won't be aliens. It's never aliens.

[Kerbart]

The various space agencies have underwhelmed us with "unprecedented discoveries" in the past.

It's usually something in a hyper-specialized niche of some sub-niche of a research subject normal people regard "esoteric" for starters.

"We've discovered that dust particles from comet 2012xyz are not perfectly round as previously thought, but rather have a circularity of only 99.72%, at least those in the size range of 1.05 - 1.07 mm"

Rarely ever it's "streaming water discoverd on XYZ with actual video footage of said water" or something along those lines.

[Green Baron]

Oh, another announcement of an announcement. How thrilling or so.

:-)

No, i don't know what it is. We all know on the 16th if we haven't forgotten to watch until then.

30 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Not that its aliens, but do aliens fall in the category of "astronomical phenomenon"?

Depends, all in all yes if they make like things that can be measured with astronomical methods. Problem is that if they don't explicitly say "Hey, we are aliens !" there is no way of telling as we cannot exclude all natural causes. Like that fruitless discussions about megastructures that meanwhile has several suggestions for natural causes but people just carry on to see weird stuff. Once the demon is out of the bottle, it is difficult to stuff it back in. Too fluffy. Like too much toothpaste on the brush, you cannot get it back into the tube ....

 

Edited October 11, 2017 by Green Baron

[Shpaget]

Is it considered a clickbait if they deliver?

[kerbiloid]

ESO? Elder Scrolls Online?!
Nirn exists!

[ProtoJeb21]

I'm hoping it's about exoplanets, but considering they call the subject of the announcement "an astronomical phenomenon that has never been seen before", it may be something else entirely. Possibly a new type of stellar remnant (like a quark star), or something even more exotic. 

At least we only have a 5-day wait. 

[YNM]

Given this is ESO, any prediction what wavelength it's in ? I mean, ESO don't operate X-rays or γ-rays or radio telescopes alone don't they ?

 

I'm presuming this has something to do with ALMA, just saying.

[Kerbart]

2 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Is it considered a clickbait if they deliver?

I can already see the Facebook post in my mind (showing a picture of bug-eyed aliens on Mars, circling the rover): "SHOCKING DISCOVER will make your jaw drop! I cried when I learned the truth!"

[LordFerret]

???

The 1936 Olympics broadcast has finally bounced off of something and is coming back?

[PakledHostage]

2 hours ago, LordFerret said:

The 1936 Olympics broadcast has finally bounced off of something and is coming back?

Contact. Good movie, better book.

[junoberries]

someone has finally downloaded the Alcubere warpdrive off CKAN and the mod didnt crash the browser ? that's my guess but idk its probably more to do with a special kind of supernova from a star we previously had no idea even existed or even more likely that fondue can be taken into space aboard a Soyuz capsule . lol 

[PB666]

No, No, its not Swiss cheese, its brie. Maybe the mun and moon are really different. I know, i know, mercury has a deep hole on its northernmost pole, they found a Kraken living inside of it.

It's not that they underwelm us, its that if it was really, really fantastically interesting, it would have been leaked before they made their announcement to announce.

 

[junoberries]

9 minutes ago, PB666 said:

No, No, its not Swiss cheese, its brie. Maybe the mun and moon are really different. I know, i know, mercury has a deep hole on its northernmost pole, they found a Kraken living inside of it.

It's not that they underwelm us, its that if it was really, really fantastically interesting, it would have been leaked before they made their announcement to announce.

 

but, Fondue has the excellent scientific property of being incredibly sticky in it's semi melted state, can be served very easily and is very high in milk protein. it's even been taken to extremes such as paragliding. 
well drat.. that bursts the bubble in my cheese... maybe they discovered an Earth equivalent to Minmus or perhaps they used an advanced telescope array to locate an astrological body made up of some form of element that is highly reactive to solar radiation in the Kuiper belt. one can only speculate but the need to know borders along madness! 

one can only hope it's something good!. gosh this feels like that present you know you cant open for another week but keep shaking thinking it's full of kerbal space program 3d printed figurines 

[LordFerret]

1 hour ago, PakledHostage said:

better book

Absolutely.

 

On topic,
Maybe it's something having to do with that celestial alignment the recently came to pass... you know, the one they were calling for End Of Days about.

[insert_name]

maybe they found planet 9?

[kerbiloid]

They saw an Eye. Then it blinked.

They realized that this a Warp Storm.

The Warp Storm. The Eye.

[munlander1]

Really, almost anything is possible here

[Green Baron]

btw., if thy announce an "unprecedented discovery", then what is a precedented discovery ? A Rediscovery ?

I still have no idea what it is. Dark matter/energy not as dark anymore, bah, we'll see :-)

[Streetwind]

It won't involve "Planet Nine". At least, I would be highly surprised if it did. ESO is the "European Southern Observatory", and planet nine is supposed to be currently visible in the northern hemisphere (if it exists at all).

Things I consider possible, considering the things that ESO has focused on in the past:
- New insights about Sagittarius A*, our local supermassive black hole
- Never-before performed measurements on exoplanets and/or their atmospheres
- Cosmology-related stuff, like Big Bang and/or the nature of our universe and its expansion
- Something Something Dark Matter

 

3 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

then what is a precedented discovery ? A Rediscovery ?

Finding exoplanets would be an example for a precedented discovery. Exoplanets have been found in the past, therefore precedent exists; but finding a new one is still a "discovery".

[Cassel]

Maybe they have found Earth-like planet orbiting Sun-like star? They did found few solar systems with Sun-like stars and one of them had Jupiter-like planet.

[kerbiloid]

...Scaled 1:11, with two moons: icy and rocky.

[Hannu2]

I am quite sure that ESO's announcement has something to do with LIGO's announcement.

http://www.ligo.org/news/index.php#oct16

My guess is that they have detected merging neutron stars gravitationally and optically.

[Tullius]

27 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

I am quite sure that ESO's announcement has something to do with LIGO's announcement.

http://www.ligo.org/news/index.php#oct16

My guess is that they have detected merging neutron stars gravitationally and optically.

You might be onto something. I looked at the announcement of the LIGO press conference, which will be split in two parts. The first part will be with LIGO and Virgo scientists, but the scientists in the second part are not directly related to gravitational waves. Nial Tanvir and Edo Berger are connected to two discoveries with the Swift X-ray space telescope, one being an X-ray outburst GRB 090423 which is the oldest observed cosmic event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRB_090423) and the other being a supernova whose observation would allow future observations of supernovae by gravitational waves (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_2008D). But this whole thing doesn't end here, GRB 090423 was verified by a telescope of the ESO.

So, we are still at a wild guesses, but these press conferences might indeed be related.