I have no idea of what it is, but stay tuned:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/may/H...a_Advisory.html

speculations are, martians, transformers, god, a dyson sphere (wiki it, this is the serious one)... and... yeah.

anyone has nasa tv?

transformers?
seriously?

what could they be hunting for 50 years?

oh, oh, i got it, intelligent life... in the mysterious system of 'government'.
fingers crossed for aliens =D you know it's be great to be in the generation of first alien contact.
but.. you know... it'll be something fundamental to science but like 'oh... ok then...' for us, like they found out where the other 90% of the universe that they didn't know where it was is, or what antimatter is or something.

the 90% of the universe is antimatter, is what's theorized, I think..

either some astronomical discovery, like an earth-like planet, or something to do with astrophysics, like antimatter or dark holes, etc?

Probably a lost probe or a meteorite.

Maybe they scooped up Dark Matter :D

I have two minds on this. I have two minds literally. My other one, Thadeus, says "hi." I'm afraid of aliens. I'm afraid becuase I just don't like that big of a change. I don't want them coming here. I want them gone. On the other hand, why would they be a threat? Chances are, they are no smarter than us. Atleast that's what I think. I would like to meet one. Shake hands... Tentacles... Appendages, anyway. Maybe we could be friends. But, they may also bring somesort of disease with them, wich is another fear. If their planet supports life, it probably also supports pathegens. Wich are alive. Thinking about the U.S. government, we'll most likely shoot at them, and cause an interplanetary war. That scares the crap out of me if they are more advanced than we are. Or even if they are more adavanced, because I would like to not have a neuclear winter. Looks like I beat Thadeus on this one. I'm scared.

they are just as afraid of us as we are of them. Who says the pollen from our world, well known for allergies, won't kill them? who says OUR pathogens won't kill them?

really, it's a two-way game.

My guess is that they found an earth-like planet. Some otherthings that would be cool if they got proof of it would be 1) Worm hole 2) White hole

Just my thoughts.

uh... megazee... uh...

*cough*

anyway, something they've been looking for 50 years and they found thanks to x-rays?
we were speculating today at school, i thought of the black monolith from 2001, hehe.


don't worry megazee, it's not alien menace, if it really were contact with another life forms, either they would be able to contact us or even know us (and thus, probably no harm to us), or they simply wouldn't care about us (so no menace!) or they would just study us without we knowing... etc...

this is not about aliens anyway... check the audio stream (at 1pm EDT, 6pm GMT).

meh... most recent supernova.

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/g19/media/

told you, no aliens...

oh. 50 years 'cos that's how long it took for the light to get here.

wow. big deal.
here I was thinking it was going to be something exiting ._.
got me all giddy >>

Darn...I thought it was like...Darth vader or something...

how would x-rays help you find a supernova?

x-rays are wavelengths, which act almost the same way as like... infrared or ultraviolet light. It rests outside the visible spectrum but with the right equipment you can still sense it. The supernova generates them, so the observatory could pick them up.

I would assume its akin to looking through a telescope and looking at it, you just receive a different image (and the process would be much more complicated).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_astronomy
you can read that if you like :b
it might be a better explanation.