Solar Flare Interference From 45k Lightyears Away

Wan2Be writes "Nasa has a story about a solar flare on Aug. 27 that affected our planet with radio bounces and blackouts - but it wasn't from old Sol, it was from SGR 1900+14, a neutron star about 45,000 light years away. "

Comments

Cajun Blackened Astronaut

[Detritus]

What sort of radiation dose would an astronaut receive if he was located outside the Van Allen Belt?

Solar flares were a serious concern to the Apollo astronauts, who were at risk while traveling to the Moon.

Re:Cajun Blackened Astronaut

[gumbi west]

They would have been killed. This is one of the biggest problems for sending people to Mars. If there were such an event durring the mission (which there almost certainly would be durring the two year mission) they would have to be in a well shielded room or would die.

How well shielded? a few meters of water would sufice, but this is getting expensive to send into space. BTW, water would be used because it is the best shield of high energy neutrons which can break up say, lead, into many protons and neutrons each of which could be more dangerous than the original particle.

Presnetly NASA keeps people on call to determine if all astronauts need to come down after each solar flare. This person has 15 minutes to make the call... Talk about stress.

Re:Just goes to show you.

[mskfisher]

You've got that right.
If you're impressed by how these "magnetars" can affect us, check out gamma-ray bursters.

From http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/mnr/st /std086:

The integrated flux of the strongest burst, GB790305, was 10^-4 ergs/cm^2 (the time structure of this pulse was consistent with a
rotating or precessing neutron star; the period is about 8 seconds).
A lethal dose to unshielded astronauts would be about 4 x 10^6 ergs/cm^2, so anyone 200,000 closer to the burster than we were had
better have good shielding.

...

If the burster was at 5 billion light years (say), the lethal radius for unshielded astronauts would be around 25,000 light years. I hope one doesn't go off in our galaxy soon.

We might get beat up real good by one of those bad boys - the Earth could get cooked if one happened right outside our neighborhood.
Ah well, what's life without a little excitement? :)

Re:a stupid pet peeve of mine

[caluml]

Stellar... Reassuringly expensive.

What if ..

[agonz28]

Just wondering ... What if this event had to happen much closer to earth?
say 500 Light years ..
The magnetic storm woud be thousands of times more powerful
How would that affect life here on earth...