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You had me after "First"
veni bibi saltavi
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That's so cool. I curious, though. If the lensed star is directly in line with the lensing galaxy, why do we see four dots instead of ring?
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This is because the lensing galaxy is not symmetrical, so only the light along four paths is brought to a focus close to us.
If you could somehow move toward / away from the lensing galaxy, you would see the images move, split and /or combine. That would be even cooler...
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: If you could somehow move toward / away from the lensing galaxy, you would see the images move, split and /or combine. That would be even cooler...
Pretty sure that the cool part of that would not be the change in image but rather the movement part (given that I am rather certain very large distances would be needed.)
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I agree that FTL travel would be even cooler than a change in an obscure gravitational lensing effect, but it is not necessary.
Gravitational lenses act in a similar manner to optical lenses. The Sun creates its own lensing effect, focusing light from infinity at ~880550 AU (thanks to the late SF author Charles Sheffield for pointing this out). If we could place a detector so that the Sun is between it and the lensing galaxy, we would create a telescope that magnifies ~3.6*10^11, i.e. 360 billion times (!)
880550 AU is about 64 times the distance reached by the Voyager space craft (see http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/[^]), but not even a hundredth of the distance to the nearest star.
modified 17-Jan-15 13:31pm.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: 880 AU is about 6 times the distance reached by the Voyager space
How far would it need to be for the posted link to achieve "...see the images move, split and /or combine."?
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The following is just my guesstimate, after a bit more thinking on the subject. Any inconsistencies / errors are my own. 
In order for the lensing to be visible, the supernova's light must be focused at our location. If the mass distribution of the gravitational lens was spherically symmetrical, we would see a perfect ring around the gravitational lens, indicating that the light is refracted all around the lens. The four points that we see indicate that the lens is not perfect.
This means that some light (from the four points that we see) is brought to a focus in the Solar System, but other light is brought to a focus before / behind the Solar System (from the gravitational lens's point of view).
Gravitational lenses require a very precise alignment between the source, the lens, and the viewer (us). If this were not so, we would see many more cases of such lensing, and astronomers would have been sure much earlier that something very strange is occurring. I would therefore guesstimate that a movement of no more than a few light-years in either direction would visibly change the image. How it would change would depend on the exact mass density in the lens.
I will gladly accept a correction to my guesstimate from anyone who is willing to work their way through the Physics / Mathematics...
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: of no more than a few light-years in either direction
And thus the first comment I made...
Pretty sure that the cool part of that would not be the change in image but rather the movement part (given that I am rather certain very large distances would be needed.)
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Agreed.
I believe that if the Human Race ever discovers an economic need to travel a few light-years - it will discover a way to do so. It may not be fast, it may not be cool, but it will answer the economic needs.
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Seems unlikely to me, though, that two cases of this both show four images; Shirley too big a coincidence to be a coincidence?
Maybe there's a Borg cube in the centre of the cluster?
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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If so, we are safe. The Borg were (will be?) destroyed in 2065, just before Earth's first contact with Vulcan. 
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I fail to see why this is news...of course it's going to be Astronomers who find it..now if a bunch of Butchers has found it.. that would be news.
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Unchanging end of heroine, emperor or magician. (11)
One day I aspire to having a signature.
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Constantine? 
Unchanging - "Constant"
End of heroine - "ine"
"Constantine" - a Roman emporer
Your time will come, if you let it be right.
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Correct, Constantine is also a magician (or possibly 'petty dabbler in the dark arts')?
It's your turn tomorrow.
One day I aspire to having a signature.
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The problem:
Let's say you decide to use a boring meeting to clean up your contact list in your smartphone. You usually sync your phone with your PC Outlook contact list using an external program, with the conflict resolution rule "The last being changed wins". No confirmation pop-up windows (too time-consuming), no data backup (these are for sissies).
What I did:
1. Clean up the contacts in my phone contact list
2. Wipe the contact list in Outlook, since it got cluttered with automatically added contacts, and some contacts appeared twice or thrice due to bad synchronisation, etc...
3. Sync Phone and PC to get the cleaned up list in both PC and phone.
Result:
*big facepalm*
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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You doubled them again ?
if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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I wish ! Since the last action was to remove them from Outlook, it also removed them from the phone... So I lost about all my contacts. 
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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Blank sheets for the new year
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Sir you deserve a medal for that
I wish you the best luck on getting them back
if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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Yup your'e and idjit.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Yet another accurate occrence of your sig  .
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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If you havent somewhere a backup your are no sissie - but a dude who can learn a lot of your own mistakes
PS: I learned to backup all my stuff (more than once)
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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Don't worry, if you are using an iThingy, you can still find them on the internet. 
Maybe not a great joke (if at all!), but seriously, didn't you back them up?
I have written a small set of utilities to backup/copy all important* data from my phone to PC and personally I do not use any other Sync software at all.
I love my HTC Touch with Windows Mobile 6.1. 
* No, that doesn't include selfies, as I don't take any.
Your time will come, if you let it be right.
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