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Exploding Star May Have Damaged Life on Earth
Reedo writes "Scientists have proposed that an ancient supernova may have damaged our ozone layer, wreaking havok on terrestrial life. Previously no one had realized that a cluster of stars could have been so close to the earth during that time. But don't worry about it happening again anytime soon. The next expected supernova is nearly 500,000 light-years away and is too far from the earth to cause any damage."
But don't worry about it happening again anytime soon. The next expected supernova is nearly 500,000 light-years away and is too far from the earth to cause any damage."
Too bad, I was thinking of a way out of doing my math homework tonight.
and i had come to believe it was all because of the anti-time anomaly
From the article:
The next member of the gang expected to go supernova is Antares, which at almost 500,000 light-years away is too distant to rattle our planet, they say.
What kind of dope are these astronomers smoking? Antares is 500 light years away.
Still quite distant, but 500000 light years will place you well outside the Milky way. It's about as far as the Magellanic clouds.
Makes you wonder if we're here to discover it happened because it happened.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
The Galactic core is closer than that, the last I checked. Andromeda is about 2 million LY away, if I recall right. Let's see.
Antares = 520 light years
CNN cites the Scorpius-Centaurus OB Association of stars which is actually about 470 light years away.
So CNN was off only by a factor of a thousand. Interesting theory, if they can get the facts right.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Researchers have always worried about there might be in fact a single cause of Mass Extinction. You can refer to this graph for the rough interval of mass extinction.
Most people believe that the meterorite impacts is responsible for the mass extinction, but now this new findings may sparks a new way of thinking - the murderer may be someone else.
If we believed that there's a cycle for Mass Extinction, there we don't have much to worry about - as it's still millions of years away. However, some people also believe that the Sixth Extinction might come earlier, because human was not present in the last 5 extinction, and that makes the great difference.
Thank you for reading my trolling. I quote as much online reference as possible, but actually my point of view are from the books I read. My apology.
"But Maiz-Appellanis and Benitez did some detective work and came up with the likely culprit -- a volatile star pack known as the Scorpius-Centaurus OB Association, which passed relatively near the solar system several million years ago."
A google search turned up:
The association is embedded in a large roughly circular structure; this is a huge bubble of hot gas created by the stellar winds of the numerous massive stars in the association and by several super-nova explosions, which happened in the Scorpius Centaurus association during the last few million years.
So supernovas have happened in our local bubble, and evidently quite close.
Crystal Meth: Would you ingest somthing made from a poisonous gas and an explosive metal? You do it every day -- Salt!
I don't even want to contemplate how much energy was given off forming the elements I'm made of. Now there's hardly enough energy left over for me to get up and fetch another beer.
Please read the paper before dismissing the theory.
Perhaps you should read the article (the scientific paper that is, not the CNN article) before dismissing it as "insultingly ludicrous."
The local bubble is thought to have formed approx. 10 million years ago, not 5-6 billion.
The paper also references works that show that the various subgroups which make up the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association, have produced plenty of supernova's in the past.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
The fossil record is "tied to" Darwinian theory only in that the latter is the most successful explanation of the former. Fossils are found things, not theoretical constructs. Determining their sge depends a lot on physics (through radioactive dating) but only weakly, if at all, on biology.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
best place to lay any media inaccuracies to rest.
here it is again, www.badastronomy.com
Although no-one has mentioned it on there bulletin board yet. Real astronomers visit this board, indeed a real one runs it.
This star group the article refers to is around 500 light years away, not 500,000. Next time, CNN should assign this "reporter" to cover trends in hairstyles or sightings of Elvis or some other topic the "reporter" might be capable of understanding.
Or maybe this is just another example of Time Warner math coming from CNN's parent, the same arithmetic that shows the record studios to be losing billions of dollars due to music "piracy". The multiples are probably similar in both instances.
This all possible, yes, but it's also extremely unlikely.
First the possible. A quick, back of a napkin calculation shows that a supernovae at around 3 light years would appear roughly as bright as the sun (depending on the circumstances). A good opprtunity to work on your tan, for a few days anyway. Nothing to really worry about, but if you're skinned, slap on some SP-40.
Now, if it's much closer, you might have some problems. At ~1.5 light years, the supernova is 4 times as bright as the sun, and at ~1 light year, it's 9 times as bright. Hooray, we know what an inverse square law is.
The real problem is this: there aren't that many stars nearby. The closest, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years away. And there's no chance of it ever going supernova - only comparatively massive stars manage that. Within 10 light years of us, there are only 12 stars (and that includes Sol). Of those there is only one that's ever going to go supernovae - Sirius, at a distance of 8.6 ly. And that's an exceptional case. You have to go to the 70th nearest star before you find another star in the same situation - Altair, at 16.8 ly.
Now, even with Sirius and Altair, they're going to be shining for millions of years to come. Now, what they're suggesting is that one of those really rare large stars just happened to be really close to us when it's lifetime of tens of millions of years came to a close. Right.
Time for those astronomers to come down from the mountain - the altitude seems to be having an effect.
True, an induced higher rate of mutations does not tend to lead to an increased rate of evolution (unless it be towards radiation tolerance) since the vast majority of mutations are silent or disadvantageous. But this would have influenced evolution nevertheless, simply by killing a load of creatures and creating turmoil in the ecosystem, leading to a period of rapid change and differing evolutionary pressures.
Evolution occurs primarily in response to outside influences of the time, rather than towards any particular goal. Asteroid impacts, volcanic eruptions, and now apparently (although IANA astronomer, and mistrust CNN) supernovae all have a bearing on how things have turned out today.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
True, but you left out a pivotal part of the story: what happened to them and when is a theoretical construct.
Now that's just completely wrong. Biologists extracting blood cells from T-Rex bones can get a fairly good idea of an upper limit for the bone's age, based on home much the organic material has decayed. And it's shy at least four noughts of any figure you're likely have in mind. (-:
Of course, when people dig up fresh dinosaur bones, or extract fresh wood from within Manley sandstone, that generally presents them with a pretty big hint about the age of what they've found. But, of course, the false assumptions undergirding this assertion...
...are so important on philosophical/metaphysical grounds that inconvenient observations like those tend to just get swept under the carpet.
I think the pi in your post is a sign from the gods of science that you're making them do too many beetles, and you need to step outside of your reality bubble for a while so they can discuss things with you. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It probably should be clarified that the statement about Antares being the next probable supernova really meant "Antares is the next likely SN candidate in that cluster". For quite some time, astronomers have been keeping an eye on Eta Carinae, which is about somewhere between 7.5K and 10K light years away, but could possibly let go at any time. It will likely be quite harmless except to astronauts and orbiting spacecraft (there is some discussion regarding whether it could become a gamma ray burster), but quite spectacular to see. There just aren't any sufficiently massive stars close enough to us to really worry about supernovas anytime soon.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas