Slashdot Mirror
'Death Star' Aimed at Earth
An anonymous reader writes "A spectacular, rotating binary star system is a ticking time bomb, ready to throw out a searing beam of high-energy gamma rays that could lead to a major extinction event — and Earth may be right in the line of fire. Australian science magazine Cosmos Magazine reports: 'Though the risk may be remote, there is evidence that gamma ray bursts have swept over the planet at various points in Earth's history with a devastating effect on life. A 2005 study showed that a gamma-ray burst originating within 6,500 light years of Earth could be enough to strip away the ozone layer and cause a mass extinction. Researchers led by Adrian Melott at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, U.S., suggest that such an event may have been responsible for a mass extinction 443 million years ago, in the late Ordovician period, which wiped out 60 per cent of life and cooled the planet.'"
443 million years ago
How do these fancy-pants "scientists" know what happened 442,994,000 years before Earth was created?
Trolling is a art,
If these rays cool the planet, and Global Warming warms the planet, we should stay a nice luke-warm and be fine, right?
If not, can't we just count on that layer of lead-based space debris to block the gamma rays? No? well then, feets don't fail me now!
stuff |
You mean I've been driving a Prius and spending my beer money on renewable energy only to have this happen!??!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
This is so completely stupid... next we will find out that the sun will burn out in 6 million years.... crap, there goes my retirement.
Didn't I see this when it was an episode of Sliders. For once, my watching an obscure science fiction show comes in handy. There was a parallel earth where a pulsar was heading towards earth and was gonna irradiate it and cause a mass extinction event.
Good show, had some hot geeky chicks on it for awhile.
"Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble."
We're doomed.
Oh, wait, HOW long will it take this radiation to reach Earth from 6,500 light years away?
Had to be said ...
It was nice knowing you.
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
I own a very old house with lead paint all over the ceiling. Since your survival depends on renting my basement, I think I'll start the bidding at $100,000/mo+utils, no pets.
8,000 light years away? Well if we make it another 8,000 years then we can worry about it.
"30 minutes until we're in range of the Earth."
"No, I say we're in range now."
*Jupiter, and Mars are destroyed, and on earth*
"... Oh crap."
-Aegis Runestone-
So if 60% of us are wiped out, what kinds of superpowers can the rest of us expect?
This is really no problem at all. I'm sure we'll find a critical flaw in the star that will allow us to destroy it in the nick of time. Possibly an exhaust port or something like that.
if years > 6000 and state == Kansas: Bad_Evolution_Jokes()
"A 2005 study showed that a gamma-ray burst originating within 6,500 light years of Earth could be enough to strip away the ozone layer and cause a mass extinction." The system in question is 8,000 light years away. So it's all good. Besides, we all know Uranus gets hit first...
Bring out your tin foil hats people!
With time lags between events of 400-plus million years, I really have to worry about this happening in my lifetime.
Nitwits.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The first thought I had reading this was "hey, this is coool !" Honestly, what is better than to be destroyed by a huge cosmic gamma-ray beam ? It's even better than to be wiped out by huge vogons spaceships to make room for a galactic highway !
Well, at least is cooled the planet...
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
John Titor would have warned us.
And we are looking back 8000 years from today, since light took us 8,000 years to get to us. It will take another 8,000 years for a gamma blast to get to us. Something tells me were out of harms way.
>> Cosmos Magazine reports
Other articles include:
10 Fabulous Handbags for the Apocalypse
Is Your Man Cheating? Find Out With A Quantum Telescope.
Lose Weight Fast - New Dark Matter Diet.
Only roaches, rats, and Steve Ballmer will live...
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
It'll at least spare us any more Chillary.
Oh, wait - we're doomed either way. F$ck! I knew I should have stayed in bed!
God, a ./'er asked"
God: Don't bug me, it is still the 7th day.
Human: Can't be!
God: You think 1 day to me is like one day to you? You arrogant twit, 1 billion of your years is one day to me.
Google will save us! We just need to drive its stock price to $1000/share and they will solve this problem.
I saw a show a year or two ago that said scientists believe the earth could soon lose its atmosphere in same the way that they think Mars once did due to the flipping or loss of its magnetic field as the core continues to flow and cool. I can't recall the name of the show but a quick Google show that Nova covered this in 2003.
It use to be that I'd first read this sort of news on slashdot, but either slashdot has fallen behind, or my local paper's improved greatly. I think the former. These days I read about it in the local paper first and a day or two later I read about it on slashdot. Then it gets duped a few days/weeks/months/years later.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You mean I've been driving a Prius and spending my beer money on renewable energy only to have this happen!??!
Bart: Aw, recycling's useless, Lis. Once the Sun burns out, this planet is doomed. You're just making sure we spend our last days using inferior products.
~Philly
Used in Stephen Baxter's excellent Sci-Fi novel Manifold: Space.
One of the best hard-science Sci-Fi books I've ever read.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
To Americans, at least, it's obvious. It hates our freedom.
but is it per cent or percent? Are we paying for this too?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
If this happens, don't make anyone angry. You wouldn't like them when they're angry.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
After Earth is pummeled with gamma rays, Hulks and Spider-Men become the norm, even passé. Marvel Comics sadly goes out of business.
Will it hit America first or the rest of the world?
How do we know that it hasn't already gone off, and the burst is due to hit us in say, 10 minutes?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I was worried about global warming, now I know this event will cool the earth off, for the next dominate species.
Right here.
Although the hills have eyes. Death Star II: This is a crappy movie isn't it?
...that it's at least 8000 years away and thus, no matter what, we will have a chance to open the crypt of civilization up!!!
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
it's a rotating binary star system.
This is ACTION NEWS, I'm Kent Brockman!!!! First off, let's go to Scott for a report on the killer rotating binary star system!!
Thank you Kent! The death toll is still at zero, but it is getting ready to shoot right up!!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
TFA says
> A 2005 study showed that a gamma-ray burst originating within 6,500 light years of Earth could be enough to strip away the ozone
> layer and cause a mass extinction
TFA also says
> At a distance of 8,000 light years from Earth, the pair of stars are a short hop away in galactic terms
So what they're actually telling us, in a roundabout way, is that there's nothing to worry about.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
That was supposed to be in response to KublaiKhan's post.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The google ads link for gamma ray credits!
Shields! SHIELDS!
Bow-ties are cool.
We don't know if a gamma burst didn't happen eon's ago and is on its way and might arrive sometime next month. Better to understand what possible risks might be. Also gives a interesting theory to start looking for evidence of gamma burst extinctions. If it turns out to have been a cause then we see we are even more fragile than we thought, with meteor strikes and methane releases from the oceans and lets not forget man's influences as potential earth busters. But if we find that it is one of the dangers then we can start thinking about strategies for coming out on the other side of the next one.
So, should something like this really happen, we can easily claim that "the creator" of this universe could care less how we pollute the world, since this would inevitably have happened, as it has in the past. lol.
Alright, I'll talk! The rebels are based on Dantooine. Just spare Earth, please.
#include <signature.h>
To global warming!
So let me see if I've got this right...
If a GRB hits us in the next 10 years, the Earth is cooked and we're screwed. Game over.
If a GRB hits us in the next 100 years, the Earth is cooked, and although I'm gone, life on Earth is still screwed. Game over.
If a GRB hits us in the next 1000 years, the Earth is still cooked, I'm long gone as are the vast majority of my descendants, but maybe mankind (assuming we live that long) will have found the means to leave the planet and preserve itself. However, life on Earth is still screwed. Game over.
Ditto for 10k years, 100k, etc. Basically, there's very little we can do to save the Earth, and next to nothing we can do collectively to save ourselves, except for a few lucky individuals. Thus, the long term goal shouldn't be figuring out how to protect the Earth, but rather we should be figuring out how to preserve our legacy. Fighting against Mother Nature has proven time and time again to be futile.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
If we get hit with gamma rays then all that will happen is we'll all bulk up, get green skin, and be able to complete our morning commute to work with mile long leaps. Purple pants, for some odd reason, will also become the latest fashion craze. Of course, we might all need some anger management courses to prevent mass-smashing of infrastructure.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Yeah well the remaining 40% can always buy a carbon offset.
How long before the doomsday (12-21-12) nut jobs connect the dots?
/hoping I did the math right
//probably not, but I think you get the point
///thinks a 60% extinction level event might just be enough
But, for every day it doesn't the more and more we move away from being lined up.
How do you know? We might be drifting into alignment. There's several degrees of uncertainty as to how precisely the system is aligned.
Let's start by putting some detectors out in space that ping us every second. When the burst hits the sensors out there in space and destroys them we'll know here on Earth because the pings will stop. Put them out about a light year away and we'll have a whole year to prepare.
See, problem solved.
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
- quote at the bottom of the page when I posted the above.
Well a light year out.. hmmm assuming that the gamma rays are traveling as fast or as any signal from the satelites, we might probably will become aware of the gamma rays shortly before we become aware that the warning system has detected the rays.
Well unless we can get a good subspace link going. hmmm we will have to work on that one.
I don't know about you, but whether it's 250,000 years from now or next week, my first reaction to a giant space death ray made of binary supernovas emitting a telltale spiral that shows you are looking down the barrel of the thing is still,
:D
"OMFG! THAT'S AWESOME!"
Come on, be honest, even if we're doomed, giant space death rays are STILL awesome... somewhere, E.E. "Doc' Smith is smiling...
Don't make ANYONE angry.. You wouldn't like ANYONE when their angry.
If a gamma ray leaves Philadelphia at 2:00pm headed West toward San Francisco....
gamma rays travel in the speed of light right? If the event happened X light years from us, X years in the past, aren't we cooked before we know it happened? Only when the burst energy reaches earth - that's the moment we know it happens.
4Z5TX
And here all along I've been feeling that a hundred miles of atmosphere is a pretty good shield against bad things from many many lightyears away.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Somebody else on slashdot posted this link http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/03/03/wr-104-a-nearby-gamma-ray-burst/ Read it if you are going to read the slashdot article. I am not sure how reliable the information is, but it seems to have a lot more data than the slashdot article has. The slashdot article is just you typical sensationalized crap saying "we are looking down the barrel of a gun." We don't know if it is pointed directly at us or not. We do not know how much matter is between the star and earth. If there is a lot of matter, then a lot of energy will be absorbed by it. We aren't even certain how far away it is (even though the article says 8000 light years). This is a binary star.... what happens if the other star goes super nova before this one creates a gamma ray burst? Will it change WR 104's aim? There are too many unknowns this article is just news media trying to promote itself by predicting doomsday.
That's no death star....
I hope we can play DNF before the mass extinction event...
You all realize that we have to survive for a long long time before this is a threat to us. I am reasonably confident that we will kill ourselves off one way or another LONG before this happens to us. Being worried about this seems very optimistic.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
i wonder if al gore will make a movie out of this, and how he will blame it on everyone else.
portfolio
God: Dantoonie is to remote for an effective demonstration
Make SELinux enforcing again!
But you do make a good point - we can't even save ourselves from ourselves, let alone an external threat :(
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
But how do you know that this Gamma Ray Burst is not in itself a pre-emptive strike against possible future human aggression towards our interstellar neighbours.
from xkcd blag: http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/02/15/the-laser-elevator/#comment-12937 Now if we can create that kind of cannon... probably asking those CERN dudes for a little help...
While such Wolf-Rayet doubles, or the LBV in Eta Carniae are definitely pre-supernovae, it is unlikely that they are likely gamma ray burst sources. GRB's have a very strong preference for low metallicity environments, almost certainly because higher metal levels cause them to loose too much mass angular momentum. In this region of the galaxy, the metal levels is too high to have a high unlikelihood of GRB's. Also note that for the GRB to propagate into space, the star must first have blown off its envelope, or the GRB is absorbed in the stellar atmosphere and simply adds to the explosion energy (this is probably quite common).
Let say , for example, we see things happening to this star that indicate super nova will be happening in 1000 years.
That mean we would have 1000 years. Stars undergo changes before going super nova.
With 1000 year time line, we might be able to save the earth. Anything from a giant sheet of lead in space, to some sort of global magnetic repulsion scheme. who knows, but it WOULD be possible.
Hell, it might even be good for us as a race.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So, assuming we don't kill ourselves some other way, or have aliens or other intergalactic happenings wipe us out, in >6500 years, we're all going to die... maybe. Guess we'd better get to work on that solution. Cancel all the research into diseases like cancer, this needs top priority, just in case.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom!
I blame this on Global Warming. lol
and THAT is why his comment is modded funny :)
also, woosh.
That sound is the joke going over your head at the speed of light.
There's always an Earth-crossing asteroid or a searing beam of high-energy gamma rays...
or an mass extiction event about to wipe out life on this planet.
The only way people get on with their happy lives...
is they do not know about it!
Sig this!
well, *if* it goes up (or already has) and we are square on in its sights,
this will be the best show we've ever seen, and the last show we'll ever see.
proudhawk raises a toast to all he knows "Salude!"
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
It always blows my mind that some people will fear this astronomically (pun intended) low risk threat, but insist we ignore the huger, if still <100%, risk of Global Warming and Climate Change.
--
make install -not war
...but that moon has a thermal exhaust port.
Blank until
This points out why it is a good thing we are near the edge of our galaxy. One factor I don't recall seeing in estimates of the odds of other planets in the universe sustaining life is fraction of the stars near the edge of the galaxy. Lots of bad things can happen if you are too close to other stars or worse black holes.
"Time is an illusion...." ... Lunch time doubly-so.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
it could have already emitted all this gamma radiation like 6499 years ago, and we wouldn't know it.
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
prepare
The problem with not having much time to prepare, is the need to take action now rather than having more evidence which eventuality will occur. Even if the burst will miss from the source in question, there is always a chance another source will fry us if we're not doing anything.
Put them out about a light year away
Reflectors and deflectors, not detectors, should be placed in line with earth and the gamma ray source. If what they is true about goaltending being the difference between winning and losing the Stanley Cup, let's award the Stanley Cup to whoever places a deflector that stops the burst from reaching us.
One of the big problems is distance - the deflector has to be far away from us in order to cover the earth. A deflector can be launched to make a beeline for the star system, but the deflector wouldn't be any use in this case until it's far enough to cover the solar system in it's path across the galaxy. A deflector that works earlier would have to track the line between us and the Death Star, assuming the gamma rays can't be curved by some unknown gravitation source. Perhaps it would work to fire a series of deflectors that overlap in coverage as the earth orbits, with redundancy in case of a space collision with some fast moving thing.
May I also suggest we start building underground and ozone plants, with drone balloons to replenish the atmosphere?
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
putting some detectors out ... about a light year away and we'll have a whole year to prepare.
Dude, you are so ready for management
Table-ized A.I.
... it is unlikely that they are likely gamma ray burst sources ... ... the metal levels is too high to have a high unlikelihood of GRB's ...
Hello, I'm Leonard Nimoy. This tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. They're all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that what matters? The answer is: no.
To dangerous, we can't rely on your offspring continuously reproducing for the next 1500 generations. Much better idea: we all contribute a dollar to help you put into hibernation for some hundred thousand years, by which time humanity will have reverted to cannibalistic cave-dwelling monsters... And then you try...
...
... Ah, forget about it.
I can finally be a millionaire selling Gamma Proof Umbrellas! Yooohoooo!!!! I knew my day would come! :-P
This story was featured on the BBC's "Horizon" science programme about 7 or 8 years ago!
My web domain.
This might be a stupid question, but I wonder how long will the gamma ray blast last, and 2) is it possible for a sufficiently large mass -e.g. Jupiter or the Sun to be interposed between we humans and said blast, and block most of the gamma rays.
..........FULL STOP.
Surely there is a greater risk of a high energy flare on the nearest star getting us first?
So gamma rays? Earth Population: Billions of Hulks? Ya, just put a big intergalactic sign for any alien invaders at the time saying: Don't piss us off!
...they forgot to add that tag line
missing sig
Large problem with this, as it's already been discussed. Information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. We would get the information from the sensors at the same time as we would be hit by the gamma ray. Even accounting for any discrepancy in the travel rate of either, we would have either no warning whatsoever or round about a minute to prepare.
There's plenty.
Conceptually, a gamma ray burst is akin to a laser beam; shade the target, and you prevent the damage. Moreover, the effects of the GRB are relatively low-energy -- it's described as splitting ozone and N2 molecules, not blasting away the whole atmosphere -- so the beam would be able to ablate only a small amount of a protective shield. Finally, the effects -- splitting molecules, creating muons, etc. -- are already happening anyway, so the protection doesn't need to be perfect, simply good enough to leave the results within the same ballpark as the level of bombardment the earth sees all the time.
Accordingly, it seems likely that manufacturing an earth-sized dust cloud between us and the GRB would be sufficient protection; essentially, corral some rocks from the asteriod belt, move them into position, and pulverize them. While that's not something we could effectively do now, it's not so outlandish for 1,000 years in the future.
Only with careful definitions.
Most of the Netherlands has been wrested from the stormy North Sea over the course of centuries, a process that would fall under most definitions of "fighting against Mother Nature". Given the state of the Netherlands today, though, it would also fall under few definitions of "futile".
A great deal of what modern civilization does and is could be considered as fighting against nature, and I would disagree that civilization is futile. Natural forces are not something that can be dismissed as irrelevant, but neither are they something that should be fawned over as omnipotent; as is almost always the case, the truth lies between the extremes.
The problem with those embracing the Bible is that most of them have never read it either. It is an amalgam of different stories that contradict each other. Any serious theologian that has studied the Bible does not believe in the literalness of the text. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence that does the same will immediately see the contradictory and ridiculous nature of it. So we are left with the stories that people can pick points of truth from to suit their own needs. It is much like astrology, people only see the parts that could be true and ignore the rest (talking snakes, dancing swords, Adam would be like God if he had eaten one more piece of fruit, etc.). There is actually no credible evidence for the miracles in the Bible or any prophecies coming true after they were written. Most scholars believe that the book of Isaiah had several authors and minor editors, with a noted change in authorship at chapter 40 (based on his name not being used, the situation changing and style).
I would agree with this to the extent that archeology can back up the movie 'Spiderman' in that I'm pretty sure New York city actually exists. Anything supernatural in the bible is not backed up by archaeological evidence, for instance the great flood.