Slashdot Mirror
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?"
I remember reading this a while back on the Wikipedia entry for the Permian Triassic Extinction Event (link), but the Wiki entry quotes specifically that an extinction like this would only happen if the star were 10 parsecs, or 30 light years away.
Dr Melott in the article claims that a star like this would have to be 6,000 light years away, or closer. (That's more than 200 times the distance previously claimed.
Keep in mind the volume of a sphere is 4/3 pi r^3, so the volume of space that this would take up is increased by a factor of 8,000,000. I'd say, that the chance of this happening to us, therefore is increased by a factor of 8 million.
As I said before, scary stuff.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
From reading the article, it didn't seem like there was any evidence of this other than speculation. They talk about using computer models to show how it would have wiped life out, but what about the evidence that brought them to this model to begin with? They could at least start with evidence in rocks or something. I wish that every time I speculated on something, that they would 200 million dollar probe. I speculate that this comment will be modded up to +5 interesting, we should launch a probe to see if this is indeed the case.
Yet another reason why the space program(s) in the whole world shout be given a high priority. Not just for technology, but ultimately for human survival in such occasion.
And if we did, would there be any way to protect the planet?"
No.
Gee, I wish all "Ask Slashdot" postings were this easy..
On the bright side, gamma ray exposure is what brought us the Hulk, and his hot cousin She-Hulk. So hey, what's few million flavors of fish, give or take?
Tinfoil hats for everyone!
Shades of Grayden
I can confirm the veracity of the theory, I've actually reproduce it through experimentation. My partner and I set up a live and a control group and did a sequenced build up until... well...
So anyways, we put Sea Monkeys in a microwave oven.
I've been fascinated by these kinds of events for a while. We live in a huge cosmos, full of billions and billions of stars, the fact is that we really could at any point be wiped out by thousands of chance events at any moment, that we wouldn't even see coming, that we right now know nothing about. If our reality as we know it suddenly got deleted for whatever reason, and we had no idea that it was coming, there would be no hindsight to be twenty-twenty about. Just another reason to live life well, while we still have the chance to. Now I feel like eating ice-cream.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Since gamma rays are travelling at the speed of light - we can't possibly get any warning of them without figuring out some kind of faster-than-light transportation or message transmission.
I suppose we could make a REALLY good predictive model of when astronomical objects are likely to do this - and predict the arrival of a gamma ray burst in time to do something about it. But what could we possibly do?
It takes a good few inches of lead (or a good few feet of concrete, dirt, whatever) to significantly attenuate gamma rays - and if the ones were are talking about were powerful enough to get through the full depth of the earth's oceans and still kill things when they got there - then you'd need to wrap the earth in a few feet of lead - or hide down some amazingly deep mine-shafts.
Since gamma rays are electrically neutral, you can't deflect them away with magnets or anything like that.
We'd have to get out of the way - but this radiation will be expanding out equally in all directions from the source. Unless we had thousands of years of warning, we'd have to high-tail it outta here at close to the speed of light in order to get far enough away for the inverse-square law to have an effect. If we're 100 light years from the source (say) and a mile of salt water doesn't attenuate the energy enough - then we'd need to be *way* more than 200 light years away if we could carry a quarter of a mile of water as a shield, 400 light years away if we had a sixteenth of a mile of water....for any reasonable amount of shielding, we need thousands of years notice of the problem happening.
In all likelyhood, we'd just sit back and let our great, great, great grandchildren deal with the problem.
We're basically doomed unless we have some kind of science-fiction technology.
www.sjbaker.org
A giant tinfoil hat is what's called for.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
1) Send Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to break the gamma ray in half...wait...
2) Make a gigantic lead planetary Dyson sphere
3) In the immortal words of David Levinson, "Uh, hide."
4) PANIC!!!
5) Seven words: Journey to the Center of the Earth.
6) Profit!!!
7) Seriously, did you just ask what we could do? Of course there's nothing we can do, you rhetorical-question-asking moron. We hope to Darwin that we can evolve.
8) Natalie Portman naked in hot grits. (If the world was about to end in a giant gamma ray bath, that is.)
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Alok Jha, science correspondent
Monday April 11, 2005
Next month, Nasa will launch the £138m Swift probe, which will sweep up to one sixth of the sky at a time, looking for sudden bursts. If all goes well, the probe could catch two three explosions a week.
Swift was launched almost 6 months ago.
Slashdot Link
And if we did, would there be any way to protect the planet?
I dunno, a massive pair of Blue Blockers?
bryan
From the article:
Gamma ray bursts are thought to be caused either when two neutron stars collide or when giant stars collapse into black holes at the end of their lives.
Then you get this:
Black holes do not exist
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr112005 /snt108532005410.asp
So which one is it? Do black holes exist, or do they not?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Would radiation blanket the entire planet? The neutron stars colide at point A and send off radiation in all directions. Some of that radiation travels in a straight line towards earth and irradiates the half of the planet currently facing the collision site. However, would the other half of the planet be spared from massive irradiation? Just like the half of the planet not currently facing the sun receives little of the radiation from it at night, could the same principle apply here? Would the critters on the "day" side of the earth relative to the collisioni be the hardest hit and instantly wiped out, and the "night" side critters spared, or does gamma radiation wrap around the planet and consume everything?
I think it's great how preoccupied so many people are about these completely obscure hypothetical apocalypse events. If life has been ticking for hundreds of millions of years without a hitch you can be damn sure that the least of our worries are going to be random gamma radiation. How about the fact that we've lost almost 50% of all types of tropical, mediterranean and temperate forests as well as 30% of deserts over the past 100 years. Stop staring at the sky waiting for asteroids and mythical dragons to swoop down and annihilate the human race, the SUV in your driveway is a much more likely candidate people...
"And if we did, would there be any way to protect the planet?"
Uh, no? First, how would you propose we detect a gamma ray burst, which travels at the speed of light (of course), before it gets here? Second, you're talking about a pulse of energy strong enough to destroy life on a planetary scale from 6,000 light years away! How the hell are you going to protect against that?! Tin foil can't help you now!
On a side note, this was a plot device in a book by Stephen Baxter, although I can't remember the title. Every couple million years, two stars in the center part of the galaxy would collide, and knock all life in the galaxy back to single-stage or before; species would struggle back up the evolutionary ladder, and just as they achieved spaceflight, the next stars would collide. Great book-
As per your instructions, we've launched the probe.
Good luck sir, and Godspeed!
Would we gain more protection from moving 50 ft underground or living on the surface in another solar system ? We pretty much need to leave the galaxy to escape this type of event. Wouldn't we have to travel about 10000 years to escape this type of event only to get to another location where the same event could happen ? I guess the species is preserved, but since we wouldn't have any quick way of knowing, and no effective interaction, does it really matter any more than other life forms in the universe. I can see leaving the earth, and appreciate to continuation of knowledge via keeping the species alive, but it seem this isn't the type of thing we have the technology to escape by moving far enough away. Maybe an glbal warning system, so if it happens again hits, the other half of the planet can go way underground ?
Second, for all those posting that a 10 second gamma ray burst won't be lethal to all of us:
They don't RTFA, and they don't read all the other posts saying the same stupid thing. What do they think this is? Slashdot?
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Given a number of confused responses to this, let's just remind everybody: it's not the gamma rays that kill (they would only get half of the globe anyway), it's the stripping away of the ozone layer followed by intense UV radiation. That's why it's a global effect.
While that would cause huge famines and disease and kill almost all humans, it is something that our species could survive given our technology.
It's Bush's fault. Global warming! Save the icebergs! It's Bush's fault. Let's get a Democrat there so that the earth will cool down.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
For a limited time I am offering heavy gamma screen lotion. This specially formulated lotion can provide you with protection for up to 12 seconds. Our lotion has been formulated with special serpentin oils and thus is guarented to work. We offer full money back after neutron star event,if your not satisfied.
"the idea of two neutron stars running into each other is pretty silly too" Not at all. There is a very well-developed theory on this. 3/4 of the stars in our galaxy have a companion or more. For some of these, the two stars are massive enough to both collapse to neutron stars when they run out of nuclear energy. Since they're gravitationally bound, they will continue to orbit each other. However, the movement of these two stars will cause them to spiral inward because they will emit gravitational radiation and lose energy. In fact, the best confirmation of general relativity to date has been to measure the orbital decay time of a pair of neutron stars (yes, we have found a few of these) and check the results against Einstein. Whether black holes exist or not, it's irrelevant to this question. It's all about neutron stars.
The consensus among professional astronomers is still overwhelmingly in support of the existence of black holes.
/ ) PSR J0737-3039 in 2003-4 using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia provides astronomers with an even better testbed.
Your second point about two neutron stars being unlikely to run into each other is not correct. Extensive studies of binary neutron star systems such as PSR B1913+16 and PSR B1534+12 provide stringent checks on general relativity. Each of these systems has two neutron stars orbiting each other with one of the pair also being detectable as a pulsar. Each component in the system is spiralling in towards the other.
The recent discovery of the first known binary pulsar system (see http://www.atnf.csiro.au/news/press/double_pulsar
In this system the two pulsars orbit each other every 2.4 hours, making them some of the fastest-moving stars known. As they orbit they lose orbital energy through gravitational radiation. They move closer together. The rate at which this happens can be determined and inital studies suggest the two pulsars will coalesce in about 85 million years. This system is about 1,600-2,00 light years or 550 parsecs distant from us. I can assure you that astronomers are actively observing and studying this system as it is allows them to test theories of gravity with incredible precision.
Neutron star collisions do/will occur and will produce strong gravity waves and most likely high fluxes of gamma rays.
There are now long-term projects monitoring pulse arrival times from pulsars across the sky with the aim of detecting gravity waves.
No. Humans are not a gene's way to make more genes.
They might be "an idea's way to make more ideas", since what humans do is mainly governed by culture, not genes. But even that is simplistic, since the actual contents of ideas matters. Some are morals, beliefs or scientific theories, all of which can utterly change the trans mission patterns of ideas, and human dynamics in general.
If the 6,000 LY limit is justifiable, I don't think it's quite as bad as you make out... at least not without some much more definitive research.
6,000 Light Years is practically next door on the galactic scale. It's certainly not infeasible (for someone qualified) to simply look at a survey of what's in our local space and determine immediately if we're at risk based on anything that looks unstable. (I'm not a professional astronomer, so someone's welcome to correct me if they know otherwise.)
The most obvious potential threat that's relatively close is probably Eta Carinae, which is about as massive as it's possible to get, and it's been hypothesised in the past that there's a small chance we might be at risk from a sudden gamma ray burst from it. But it's still about 8,000 light years away and there's still not enough known about it to have any accurate idea of when it's going to blow itself apart, either tommorrow or millions of years from now.
If there's still a reasonable chance that it could happen at some point in the future, this doesn't mean that there's any chance at all of it happening tommorrow. Stars orbit move a lot relative to each other sa they orbit the galactic centre. Our Sun does that in about 226 million years, but in the space of hundreds of thousands of years, galactic material barely moves relative to each other at all. It's feasible that at some time in the next few million years or more we will be close to something dangerous for some period of time. If we're not close enough to it now, though, the chance of that happening is still zero.
This is all dependent on that 6,000 Light Year limit being correct, of course. Clearly it's still all subject to change as we learn more about the Universe, which we still know next-to-nothing about. I don't think there's much point worrying about the great unknown, though, at least until we know enough to know that there's actually a risk. Otherwise it would just lead to paranoia.
Never mind that, what about the far side of THIS planet? I have a hard time believing that gamma rays could be much of a threat with 7,000 miles of rock and molten iron for shielding. Energy transmission falls off exponentially with linear increases in the thickness of your shielding, don't forget.
Unless it's the Big Bang reprised, I don't think any organism on the "dark side" of the Earth would suffer a bit of harm. And anything like a neutrino that could pass through the Earth would also (statistically, at least) sail right through you, leaving you untouched.
IANAA-p. I am not an astro-physicicst. Anyone see any flaw in my argument?
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Any gamma burst from a single point will only fall on half the Earth's surface directly. What stops us from just hopping across to the other half, instead of needing scifi tech to survive?
Short Answer: RTFA
Long Answer:
The Gamma rays would destroy the ozone on the unlucky side. Once the ozone redistbutes, you are down to 50% everywhere. That is, aparently, enough to kill plankton. Probably would kill land plants, too.
So, on the unlucky side everybody dies. On the lucky side, crops fail for several years. Very bad news, though I doubt it would actually exterminate the human race. Plants would still grow in UV filtered green houses.
The real problem is ozone depletion and the formation of odd Nitrogen compounds, such as NO2. NO2 absorbs visible light (i.e. it gets dark and cold) and also steals ozone, O3, which is what saves our DNA from getting destroyed by UV light. Its not the gamma rays themselves that will kill us, they'll only last for 10 seconds and plenty of people will survive by simply being on the other side of the planet at the time. the radiation isnt going to cover the entire planet, but the argument they are trying to make is that it will make a hole in the ozone layer and might lower global temperatures. Here are some quotes from a preprint paper of theirs that I dug up at http://www.arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0503/0503 625.pdf
"For some time, it has been known that high energy radiation may, through dissociation of N2 , create a variety of "odd nitrogen" compounds which lead to ozone depletion, making the atmosphere more transparent to solar UVB (290-315 nm) radiation. UVB is strongly absorbed by the DNA molecule and hazardous to life [e.g. Cockell 1999]."
"Reid et al. [1978] noted two other potentially important effects, which have been acknowledged [Thorsett 1995] but not yet treated quantitatively in subsequent discussions of GRB atmospheric ionization effects. NO2 is one of the primary compounds formed. It has a major role in O3 depletion, but also absorbs strongly in the visible, giving it a brown cast. Such absorption may easily lower global temperatures, if sufficient NO2 is formed. Also, rainout of dilute nitric acid (HNO3) is one of the principal mechanisms of removal for the so-called "odd nitrogen" or "NOy" compounds formed. This can potentially contribute large amounts of biologically active nitrogen to the biosphere. The results are unpredictable but may be major, since biota are typically nitrate-starved and highly responsive to supplementation [Schlesinger 1997]"
The name of the book was manifold space. Great sci-fi, probably Baxter's best book. Dont read the other manifold books they are in no way part of a series.
I remember picking up that book and being floored by the fact that it starts off with the Fermi paradox. The downside is the plot is pretty morbid. I won't give away the ending but prepare to be underwhelmed with the rewards all of the main characters get for in some cases literally thousands of years of tireless effort towards the safety of humanity and life in general
A pre-print of the research article is available. The impression that I get is that they don't claim to really "prove" the idea, but rather pose it as a very interesting hypothesis which is compatible with the evidence and deserves further investigation. In particular, I think their claim is that gamma ray bursts can explain the evidence of rapid cooling from the extinction period. Of course, the popular press claims this tentative hypothesis like it was already a concrete fact, but that's what the press does.
Here's the basic info:
Title: Did a gamma-ray burst initiate the late Ordovician mass extinction?
Abstract: Gamma-ray bursts (hereafter GRB) produce a flux of radiation detectable across the observable Universe, and at least some of them are associated with galaxies. A GRB within our own Ggalaxy could do considerable damage to the Earth's biosphere; rate estimates suggest that a dangerously near GRB should occur on average two or more times per billion years. At least five times in the history of life, the Earth experienced mass extinctions that eliminated a large percentage of the biota. Many possible causes have been documented, and GRB may also have contributed. The late Ordovician mass extinction approximately 440 million years ago may be at least partly the result of a GRB. A special feature of GRB in terms of terrestrial effects is a nearly impulsive energy input of order 10 s. Due to expected severe depletion of the ozone layer, intense solar ultraviolet radiation would result from a nearby GRB, and some of the patterns of extinction and survivorship at this time may be attributable to elevated levels of UV radiation reaching the Earth. In addition a GRB could trigger the global cooling which occurs at the end of the Ordovician period that follows an interval of relatively warm climate. Intense rapid cooling and glaciation at that time, previously identified as the probable cause of this mass extinction, may have resulted from a GRB.
I thought we fell apart much more rapidly because of child-rearing.
Inasmuch as no one has, insofar as I've read, any way of detecting that a large gamma burst occurred for any of the mass extinctions, I think that we should settle for the things we can detect.
For instance, the greatest mass extinction that occured at the end of the Permian Period was associated with the largest surface outpourings of magma that the earth has ever experienced. These episodes poison the air and the water on a worldwide basis. No need for hypothetical gamma bursts to explain the largest extinction.
Technology has advanced considerably when compared to 450 million years in the past. When it comes to gamma rays and so forth, if you consider the fact that life exists on the planet now, ironically, an asteroid hitting the planet would have a much larger inpact than a starburst. In the case of a starburst, with the help of radioactive precautious measures such as lead and a little bit of water, we can taste the rainbow.
You are confusing what you ought to do with what mathematically represents the general tendancies of your breeding behavior. In doing so, you deprive yourself of all the advantages of humanity. I also read the selfish gene. I was barely a highschooler when I read it: already interested in the field of genetics. At the time, it made a brilliant sort of sense. Our actions encaged by the selfish genes. How brilliant, how pure! When I grow up, I will have harems and seed sperm banks. My sweet sweet genes will survive! Twelve years and a lot of population genetics later I still remember that book quite clearly. I remember it because of how little since it makes in the face of real science. The first major crime committed by your arguement is that of heubris. Genetically, the death of the individual does not matter that much for a given gene pool. Your genes will continue as long as the group's genes continue: every gene in your genome will be represented. It makes heroism make a bit of sense. It opens us up for freedom to die. Quite liberating, actually. The second major crime espoused by your position is that of confusing mathematics with philosophy. Allow to to provide an example. When I was a young lad, after reading that foolish book, I was really concerned: I was brilliant, and it was my duty to insure my brilliant genes would pass on. I could insure this with my brilliance; with the harems and sperm banks previously mentioned. But would this be enough? Would I also have to go on semenary roadtrips across foreign lands, seeding the population like johnny appleseed? That's what Attila the Hun had to do, but I don't know if I could act like that. How would I be able to overcome my moral repugnance to the actions of the selfish genes? I was truly concerned that my moral sense was going to be a competitive disadvantage. Poisoned by memes! For surely nothing so disadvantageous as morality could have a genetic component? You have to forgive me for worrying about such silly things as selfish genes: I was extremely young and uneducated. I don't worry about that stuff any more. My genes aren't anthropomorphic things that define me and dictate my actions. They have brought me where I am, but then leave it up to me to decide what to do with it. Surely you can think of examples of choices that make sense for the individual but not for their genetic legacy? Surely you don't think that becasue genes are passed on, that that becomes more important than the choices you make? Monks make choices; they find those choices to be more important than passing on their legacy. Their genes are still circulating in the community of other humans; it is no loss to the pool. Their genes wouldn't care even if they did have a say. Evolutionary principles may tell us what happens, but they can never justify those choices. Your arguement could equally be used to rationalize male polygamy because of evolutionary tendancies. LEAVE DARWIN OUT OF IT. Mathematics has never been used to dictate morality.
Actually, there might be a way to get a little bit of warning, depending on the source of the gamma ray burst.
Photons (gamma rays) take a long time to get out of a star. But neutrinos, because of their physical properties, pass right through most of the star. Most nuclear reactions that generate photons also generate neutrinos. They're just very hard to detect (because of that same physical property).
Well, I'm working on a neutrino detector at the South Pole right now. http://icecube.wisc.edu/
It could, when it's complete, pinpoint the source of the neutrinos. Given the energy level of the neutrinos and the sudden, large burst of them, a whole lot of scientists are going to be woken up - and I mean that literally.
An earlier version of the project, AMANDA http://amanda.wisc.edu/, already has a supernova detector. It hasn't gone off yet, but when it does it will start a sequence of events that ultimately steers a lot of telescopes to point at that supernova.
1. 2.
I've read the selfish gene too. A couple of times in fact, the last one only last month. You clearly didn't get it. Perhaps you were too young and naive when you read it and interpreted it in the way that you wanted too (as many people have done in the past to justify selfish behviour of all kinds). But the point that Dawkins makes is exactly the same as yours - that with our understanding of what we are and how we happened we're in the unique position of being able to resist the urges of our selfish genes.
The planet, and its life, is being destroyed in a
much less spectacular, because much more gradual, way by humans currently.
bjd
Let's hope it's the OTHER half. ;-)
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Surviving the first 10 seconds is not the problem. Surviving the next 30 years is the problem.
There have been many articles and papers and whatnot published over the last several years, all proposing different models of what happens when Earth gets hit by a gamma-ray burst. They all point to Very Bad Things happening to the atmospheric layers, which then has a cascading effect.
Fine, you survive the first 10 seconds, but none of the crops did. Growing new crops in time to feed anyone is problematic when the UV shielding is gone. Reactions in the lower atmosphere would likely form a fair deal of the chemicals that result in "acid rain", so once you're wearing 100% UV sunscreen and can go outside, you still can't grow anything. Etc, etc.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
the lead of this article suggests that one of these going off anywhere in our galaxy is planetocidal, but when we read the article- the model they are using is one of these going off 6000 ly away. Since the galaxy is over 100,000ly across and we are about 2/3 out from the center, a random distibution of these things suggests their model is of a very close one.
I dont do meaning of life questions.
If the GRB only lasts for a few seconds, the opposite side of the planet will be protected from direct irradiation.
Of course, side effects like a damaged ozone layer could spread to that side, but I fail to see how all life could be suddenly wiped out.
C - the footgun of programming languages
From my limited observation, most people tend to have a "compressed" (for lack of a better word) perception of large distances, weights or times. Sort of like Terry Pratchett's trolls, whose counting skills went "one, two, lots", but on a larger scale. Beyond a limit, for the vast majority of humans anything is just "lots". I mean, picture one human in your mind. You can do that. 10 humans? No problem. 1000 humans? How about one _billion_ humans? It's, uh, "lots". Do you know how long a day is? Not just theoretically, I mean. Well, yes, you experience that time interval every day. How about a year? It still works. How about a _billion_ years? Try to really imagine that interval in your head. It's, uh, "lots" of time. In practice, for most humans the "lots" limit is even lower. E.g., people have no trouble treating intervals like 20,000 years of a SF universe's history as a blip where nothing noteworthy happened. Yeah, sure, for 20,000 years noone designed a new ship or generally invented anything new. Now think that in half that time RL humans moved from living in caves to launching spaceships. (The first known city is less than 10,000 years old.) So in fact, that "20,000 years" interval is perceived as a _much_ smaller one. Once you've reached the "lots" limit, everything above that is the same. If someone's "lots" limit for time is, say, 20 years, anything over that will be the same. Be it 20,000 years or a billion years, is in fact perceived as the exact same as 20 years. Hence our fascination with stuff that could happen in a billion years or several billion years. (E.g., that our sun will eventually kill us all.) Because instinctively we perceive it at a much closer point in the future. It's in the same "lots" range a your kids' going into retirement. (Incidentally, and just for the sake of a tangent, most people's inability to comprehend evolution. Stuff like billions of billions of billions of organisms, over billions of years, gets compressed to the same "lots" range as 100 cows on a farm over 20 years. And, duh, noone saw those evolve into something else.) Well, it's just a wild hypothesis. I could well be wrong.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
be it a gamma ray burst, meteor/comet collision or a volcano eruption big enough to destroy the environment, if any of the above happens it is much to big for humans to control and it would doom humanity to extinction...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Stress is a symptom of other problems, not a cause, the way of your body telling you you are doing something very wrong in maintaining it. The sooner everyone realizes this, the happier they will be.
Consider this:
As I'm sure you know, neutrinos very rarely interact with matter, but they do interact. Now, currently we are bathed with a flux of approximately 5,000,000 neutrinos/cm^2/s (could be off by a factor of 3, and depends on what kind of neutrinos you're talking about). At this flux, interactions are extremely rare and we have to set up huge tubs of water or cleaning fluid in order to detect them. However, what if the flux was not 5 x 10^6, but was on the order of 10^10? Well, I don't know, but I expect we'd still be OK, although we suddenly would be exposed to an increased amount of radiation from the 10,000-fold increase in neutrino interactions. We might even notice the occasional flashes in our retinas (although I doubt it). Now, what if that was increased to 10^30 neutrinos/cm^2/s? Now we're talking about an increase similar to Avogadro's number. I'm fairly certain we would notice that, and I expect it would not be healthy. Perhaps I'm wrong about that, but I'm certain you agree that there's some flux of neutrinos that definitely qualifies as being "a very bad thing".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I mostly meant that during the process of raising children you get worn out physically and mentally. I'm thinking all the late nights, interrupted sleep, emotional and physical drain of being in close contact with children. But there are some up sides too!
Like...?
Ah, but we evolved to run after food every day, and survive without when we couldn't catch it. Modern life has changed faster than evolution can keep up. We aren't made to sit in a cubicle all day. We aren't made to drive cars everywhere, or get a meal whenever we want it, or play video games after sitting in a classroom all day. Hence many problems from living a modern life; American obesity comes to mind.
- Supernovae may not be predictable, but mergers of neutron stars may be. If theory of gravity waves is correct, we could detect the orbital spin-ups before mergers using laser interferometers.
- If you can stick enough mass in the path of the burst to scatter the gamma rays to lower-energy photons or deflect them entirely, you could prevent this problem. This means having a disc of material at least 8000 miles across in the exact right place to shadow the Earth at the moment of the burst, but I never said it would be a small job.
From this, it follows that long-baseline laser interferometers and GRB research are good things for now. Aiming for serious space-construction capability is a good long-term goal.Sustainability and energy independence essay
No, stress kills.
The difference is, those stresses your body/mind is adapted to.
About to get trampled by a mastodon? Bam! Adrenaline surge, you run, condition resolved and a few hours later your body chemistry is completely normal.
But we've created a world of constant low-level stressors, where our fight, flight, or freeze reactions won't help. Stressors are unresolved, so the alert mechanism is always on at a low level, diverting resources away from the immune system and the restorative mechanism.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Dude, excellent band name!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
What's worse now is that people self-medicate to reduce the same stresses that people experienced in prehistoric times. Used to be that if you couldn't handle the stress your carcass was quickly eaten by carrion birds. Now we have all these weak genes flowing rampantly through our pools, simply because we are 'civilized.' The thought of it leads me to drink. Now where's my Prozac?
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Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Sound familiar?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
But there are some up sides too!
Like...?
diaper changes in your 80's.
Do you Gentoo!?
I'm not sure that's the principal reason we invented religion, but it is one of the main reasons for its broad appeal...
Like hearing my 2.5 year old son giggle manically when we spot him peeking through our bedroom door at 7:00am. Like seeing grandma's face when she says "See the sun going down?" to our five year old daughter and our daughter says "Actually the sun stays still - the part of the Earth we live on is just turning away from it." Like having two little guys who are small enough to crawl under Daddy's desk and help him fish cables, and who get such an enormous kick from doing it. I'll now return you to our normal Slashdot cynicism :)
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Laws of thermodynamics and entropic considerations ultimately dictate that organized (non-random) systems will eventually decay toward randomness.
However, the question with regard to rate is of the utmost importance in self-replicating systems. Bacteria in a sense do not die, in that they clone themselves (albeit with sometimes intermittant reproduction through genetic exchange with other bacteria) and hence in a sense are immortal (they make identical copies of themselves which persist more or less indefinitely).
Studies of the aging process (ie genes controling catabolism relative to anabolism) in eucaryotic organisms suggest that genetic systems have evolved genes that actually shorten life span. Hence, the question arises as to why, since one might initially assume that being able to live forever (like bacteria) would seem a more effective reproductive strategy.
It turns out that there appears to be selection for genes that produce shorter life spans in situations in which the presence of such genes increases the probability of survival of the offspring, even if their activity/presence takes place at the expense of the parent. It would seem that perpuation of self-replicating systems necessarily requires the need to take some risks to overcome the reality of dynamic environments. Ones current genetic makeup although nearly optimal (or more apply sufficiently near optimal) in the current environment may not be so in a future environment. Hence, a slightly different genetic makeup in ones offspring may be selected for in some future environment. Since prediction of exactly what the future environment might be is to some degree uncertain, most sexual organisms are capable of having more than one offspring, thereby increasing variety and hence the probability that at least some will be nearly optimally suited to survive.
Keep in mind, however, this is only an evolutionary strategy. While only those gene combinations that are successfull in reproducing will persist in subsequent generations, there is no guarantee that a particular gene combination will survive.
As for your arguments regarding "genes not grading anything in levels of mportance or having a perspective", this is really little more than a matter of semantics. The adult phenotype is nothing more than the product of its genes acting in an environment during its ontogeny. While it might seem to we are something more than our genes, at a molecular level there is nothing about us that is not the direct result of metabolic processes that occur (or occurred) as the direct result of the collective response/relative control of our genes to our environment. However, when you consider the shear number of different variatnts of tens of thousands of human genes and the incredible diversity of their responses to slightly different kinds of environments, the complexity is truely something to marvel at; so much so that it is hardly worth worrying about whether or not "something" (like some kind on mystical spiritual essesence or soul or other such unecessary nonsense) is missing.
I have an AOL email account, so I expect to be still getting spam a thousand years from now.
Given that we're talking gamma radiation, that should be a lead foil hat.
Hey, I'll have you know the vending machine is *all the way* on the *other* side of the building. As soon aa a cube over there frees up, I'm outta here. Hmm, it might speed things up if I push Joe in front of that next mammoth.
A fever is also a symptom and fever also kills. A symptom can get to the point where it is worse than the problem it is signalling.
Laws of thermodynamics and entropic considerations ultimately dictate that organized (non-random) systems will eventually decay toward randomness.
This argument is so often used falsely about biological systems that it needs correcting (even though I doubt you intended to sound like a creationist). Organized systems will decay towards randomness without energy input. Fortunately there's this huge fusion furnace in the sky dumping energy into the system like crazy.
There may well be a reason why organized systems tend to have limited duration, but it's not thermodynamics!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yes, a main reason that our particular organized system (earth) does not decay toward randomness is because of the sun's energy input. But even this is just a temporary reprieve from the omnipresent laws of thermodynamics, as the order in one small corner of the larger system (the universe) increases at the expense of greatly decreased order in the rest of that system as a whole. Any "energy input" is just order moving from one section to another, and a temporary evasion of the tendency towards decay of an organized system.
So yes, organized systems do always tend toward decay (if your time span is long enough (i.e. including the death of our sun), or your scope large enough(i.e. including the sun itself)), and yes, that tendency is governed by the laws of thermodynamics.
I also don't see how this smacks of creationism, especially when you consider that given the best theory we currently have for the origin of the universe, the universe started out in a highly ordered state. Couldn't there be some of that order left, gathered up in our little corner of space and time?
Of course, I'm genuinely interested to hear your views on what other causes there might be for the decay of order in organized system.
Just another proletarian malcontent.
Wouldn't it just destroy the portion of the human race (and other species) on the half of the globe facing the burst source? An entire planet's worth of soil, rock, magma, etc. makes a pretty good shield.
Humanity is certainly positioned to survive such an event, though many wild species lack our enviable dispersion and would not.
6. Audible Alarm (not shown)
-from a Cuisinart product owner's manual.
It seems to me that something else is required for maintaining organization other than mere energy. Energy alone will increase the heat of the system: more heat->more particle motion->more disorganization. There must be some sorting or filtering mechanism in place to selectively apply that energy... unless steam is considered more organised than ice.
Please enlighten me.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Like the screams of joy as you walk through the door after work, making you forget all the stuff that happened at work that day? And the next day they ask if you can stay home from work...and you do. Who else would you do that for?
:-)
Or the sheer wonderment and joy on their faces as they experience something new to them, that you take for granted everyday. (Think elevators for a minute, or escalators until security shows up
Or doing the inevitable childrens damage to themselves, and crying, yet a kiss from you wipes all the tears and pain away. And then in return offering you a kiss when you say "Ow!"
Or maybe last week, when Daddy was sick, how my 2.5 year old was concerned enough to get me my
medicine (really just vitamin C tablets) and juice and water. Concerned enough to come up with "Daddy has to lie down, get better! No 'puter!!"
Or perhaps how they have a different view of things, in that they can teach you as much as you teach them.
I could go on and on...
"during the process of raising children you get worn out physically and mentally. I'm thinking all the late nights, interrupted sleep, emotional and physical drain of being in close contact with children."
Never looked at it that way. You are correct in a way....but it's all worth it.
Vip
Alright, I'm going to be really generous in my calculations here...
Assume Betelgeuse has a mass of about 15 solar masses (estimates vary between 12 and 17 solar masses), or about 3e31 kg. Now, assume that (and here's the generous part) the star converted 10% of its mass at the time of supernova into photons, and this burts only happened for 1000000 seconds (a week or so, minescule in the grand scheme of things). Taking E=mc^2, like one always should, that's a total power of about 3e41 watts. Fantastic.
Now, assume the diameter of the Earth is about 1.2e7 m, and the distance between earth and Betelgeuse is 425 lightyears, or say... 4e18 m. That means, from Betelgeuse, Earth subtends a whole 4e-24 steradians of the sky. Better put, only about 6e-23 percent of the light from Betelgeuse reaches Earth.
So, some quick math, and that gives us about 1e3 watts per square meter. That's a factor of 10 smaller than what the sun imparts to us on a day-to-day basis, so we really have nothing to worry about. The long and the short of it is, it will be very easy to see at night for about a week, but don't go stocking up on suntan lotion.
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