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Sea Life Wiped Out by Neutron Star Collision?
Memorize writes "Scientists report in the Journal of Astrophysical Letters that a mass extinction of marine life 450 million years ago might have been caused by radiation from an exploding star, such as a collision between two neutron stars, or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole. Such an event would cause a ten-second burst of gamma radiation, and if it occurred within our galaxy, it could have wiped out many species on earth. At least if astronomers find out that an asteroid is heading our way, we can do something about it, but if there is a gamma burst, we get no warning. And if we did, would there be any way to protect the planet?"
Ummm, I understand that breeding may be important, but what part do females play in that??? How does it work??? Are they important? Surely not as important as computers!
Yours confusedly,
Errr...
However, I don't go worrying about being hit by a car continuously, because I can mitigate the risk of being hit by a car, and if I do get hit by a car, the entire human race doesn't perish.
People care A LOT about whether they have any control over their life and death. I learned a bit about this while playing RPGs.
I used to play role playing games quite a lot. The group I played with liked a variety of genres including D&D, Traveller, the James Bond rpg and Twilight 2000. Twilight 2000, for those of you who don't know (probably most of you) was an RPG set in a post apocolapse world where you're all soldiers in Europe who've been told "you're on your own. Good luck."
As a game master I found Twighlight 2000 kind of frustrating. Everyone had very deadly weapons like machine guns, grenades, mortars and tanks, but, as a GM, I found I couldn't really use them to their full effect.
You see, if you're playing D&D and a player is fighting sword to sword with the bad guy, if the bad guy gets in a killing blow the player will take it pretty well. But if you roll the dice and say "you three just got hit by seamingly random mortar fire and you're dead," the players are going to lynch you.
It doesn't matter that real war is like this. People die all the time when hit by random fire that they have no contol over. It doesn't matter that regular life is like this. Many people who catch deadly diseases have no idea where the got them. But people hate it. We want to have control, even over our deaths, even though we know, logically that we have very little real control. It's an iteresting human trait.
TW