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'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.
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."
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.
The problem is that we see the star as it was 6500 years ago. As far as we know, it could have already exploded, and a good bunch of gamma rays be coming to us right now. So you were right, we're doomed ^^
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...
John Titor would have warned us.
>> 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!
You don't know that it didn't already go nova 8000 years ago.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Well, at least we don't have to listen to their damned poetry!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
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
To Americans, at least, it's obvious. It hates our freedom.
That would explain why his ping sucks in TF2.
If this happens, don't make anyone angry. You wouldn't like them when they're angry.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
Right here.
it's a rotating binary star system.
You're forgetting about the photino birds.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
And faster than light communications, otherwise the message will reach us at eh same time as the radiation.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Bow-ties are cool.
Shouldn't we put paper bags over our heads and lay down or something?
message: Ha Ha
Then the gamma ray hits.
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.
Yeah well the remaining 40% can always buy a carbon offset.
Whip out your concordance. The Hebrew word for "day" used in Genesis isn't meant to be metaphorical; it's a literal, 24-hour period of time.
If you assume that everything in the Bible is no deeper than a convoluted historical document, you're missing a lot.
DATABASE WOW WOW
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.
Reminds me of an old joke:
A man has gained an audience with God.
Man: Oh Lord, what is a million years like to you?
God: To me, my son, a million years is but a day.
Man: Oh Lord, what is a million dollars like to you?
God: To me, my son, a million dollars is but a penny.
Man: Oh Lord, would you give me a penny?
God: Tomorrow.
Whip out your concordance. The Hebrew word for "day" used in Genesis isn't meant to be metaphorical; it's a literal, 24-hour period of time.
If you assume that everything in the Bible is no deeper than a convoluted historical document, you're missing a lot.
The Bible needs this warning sticker.God: Dantoonie is to remote for an effective demonstration
Make SELinux enforcing again!
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).
Yep.
However, we might be able to spot changes in a star leading up to the actual burst. If we knew what to look for.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Actually you're wrong. The word day is used in many contexts in the Bible. The creative days mentioned in the Bible are not literal 24 hour days. In context they refer to periods. There are also scriptures in both Old and New Testaments that say "a thousand years are but as a day in God's eyes" so at bare minimum the creative days would be 6000 years. But what people fail to realise is that there are two creative periods. Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" but from Genesis 1:2 onwards it talks about creative days on Earth and in the original Hebrew the language indicated it was from the perspective of someone standing on the earth looking up so the creation of the sun, moon, and stars would have seemed to have just happened as a dark cloud was removed thus unveiling the luminaries. The problem with those decrying the Bible is that most of them have never read it so they know stuff all about it. For all the mocking if people read it they'd realise it is a fascinating book with prophecies which have been so accurate that in many cases it's been accused of being written after the fact which is wrong considering that Daniel had the book of Isaiah before the fall of Babylon and Isaiah had written not only that Babylon will fall but who and how (Isaiah 45:1-25) which is the only prophecy to mention a person by name and was written 200 years before the event. Archeology backs up most of the Bible so it's not just a book to be taken on faith.
Oh no. The day-age theorist argument again. If you use that concordance properly, you will note that the usage is not "Back in Caesar's day..." for the Hebrew word 'Yom.' It is used hundreds of times throughout the Bible. The only time it appears to mean more than a single cycle of light and dark (or the period of light only) is when it is applied with a modifier. Even Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (are there others?) states that for the word to mean anything other than a single revolution of the earth (or just the sunlight portion), requires a modifier, such as an enumeration, or something meaning several, or a period of days. So, some day, the gamma rays may wipe out our ozone layer, but is that the Judgement Day, where a third of the world's waters boil up, and a third of the lands are consumed with fire? Holy death star, indeed!
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
...but that moon has a thermal exhaust port.
Blank until
If you believe that everything contradicting a literal interpretation of the Bible is a lie, you're missing even more.
That's exactly the point I was trying to make. They're creation stories, not docu-dramas. Ask, "what insight is the author of this text trying to convey?" not "How can I rationalize a story to fit a literal history I want to believe in."
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I truly believe that time is not linear. The bible I think makes this point with the "a thousand years is as a day" statement. Lot's of other interesting things in the bible. I think it's in Job where it states that "he hangeth the earth upon nothing." I know most people here don't believe in the bible or God...at least not the biblical one. Even if you don't believe it though...it's still an interesting read.
I was a bit sloppy with my post, thank you for clarifying the process.
The point I was trying to make was that a star just doesn't go supernova from a normal star with no 'warning' Of course, the last phase just before it reaches the Chandrasekhar limit is very short, and the subsequent collapse IS effectively instantaneous.
But it shows that the star does go through a 'series' of collapses. It was those collapses that I was clumsily referring to as giving off indicators.
For example, if the star did go nova '7999' years ago, then we would see that it was already burning carbon which would be a pretty good indicator that we were set for a light show.
The real question I have is why the astronomers seem to think that the supernova event is so near, yet outside of the normal timeline by which they should be able to determine that it is so near. If it was burning Helium, you could expect it to last one to one million years. But if it was already on Carbon, then you could be fairly certain that it would only be a few thousand at most.
This is just guessing on my part, but I wonder if they are only detecting that it is burning Helium, but that the combination of the second star in the system is 'feeding' the WR star, causing its 'life' to accelerate.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
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.
The Book of Daniel is a fiction, written hundreds of years after the events it claims to portray. It's easy to make prophecies come out correctly in fiction.
Uh, no. For starters, remember the whole captivity in Egypt thing? Big part of the Old Testiment? Archaeological evidence - none. Herod's slaughter of young boys around Bethlehem? No evidence outside the Gospels.
As literature and myth, some parts of the Bible have some merit. As history or as a sensible guide to ethics or philosophy, it's badly wanting.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood