Mysterious Objects at the Edge of the Electromagnetic Spectrum
March 16, 2012: The human eye is crucial to astronomy. Without the ability to see, the luminous universe of stars, planets and galaxies would be closed to us, unknown forever. Nevertheless, astronomers cannot shake their fascination with the invisible.
Outside the realm of human vision is an entire electromagnetic spectrum of wonders. Each type of light--from radio waves to gamma-rays--reveals something unique about the universe. Some wavelengths are best for studying black holes; others reveal newborn stars and planets; while others illuminate the earliest years of cosmic history.
NASA has many telescopes "working the wavelengths" up and down the electromagnetic spectrum. One of them, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope orbiting Earth, has just crossed a new electromagnetic frontier.
"Fermi is picking up crazy-energetic photons," says Dave Thompson, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "And it's detecting so many of them we've been able to produce the first all-sky map of the very high energy universe."
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/16mar_theedge/
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Last edited Mon Mar 19, 2012, 03:16 PM - Edit history (1)
No, really. It was found recently that if you managed to build an Alcubierre warp drive, one of the side effects would be incinerating any planet you stopped at with gamma radiation (see Warp drives are PLANET KILLERS, Sydney Uni students find. So if there is a spacefaring civilization in our galaxy, these bubbles are what we'd see.
Let's pretend to be out.
...of dilithium crystals throughout the universe. 
