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How Nearby Supernovae Affected Life On Earth
sycodon writes with news of research into how nearby supernovae affected the development of life on Earth. "[Professor Henrik Svensmark] found that the changing frequency of nearby supernovae seems to have strongly shaped the conditions for life on Earth. Whenever the Sun and its planets have visited regions of enhanced star formation in the Milky Way Galaxy, where exploding stars are most common, life has prospered. Prof. Svensmark remarks in the paper, "The biosphere seems to contain a reflection of the sky, in that the evolution of life mirrors the evolution of the Galaxy.' ... The data also support the idea of a long-term link between cosmic rays and climate, with these climatic changes underlying the biological effects. And compared with the temperature variations seen on short timescales as a consequence of the Sun's influence on the influx of cosmic rays, the heating and cooling of the Earth due to cosmic rays varying with the prevailing supernova rate have been far larger.""
Considering the majority of matter on the planet, including life, is from the remnants of a supernova, I'd say it helped quite a lot.
IIRC, a temporal anomaly - which was created by the Enterprise shooting its magical bullshit beam into the same place, at three points in time, grew bigger as it went back in time, and prevented life from forming.
Q bopped Picard around from past to present until he figured it out, and saved the day with an inverse magical bullshit beam and paradox, whatever bullshit LeVar Burton spewed out to "explain" it.
Ultimately Q's the good guy, since while he wasn't allowed to directly affect or fix it because of more magical bullshit Q rules, he bent the rules to lead Piccard figure it all out.
Or was that not the last episode? You should maybe ask someone who liked the show more than me. I just liked to rub one out to the space cheerleader mind reading chick, now and then.
No, that was where Picard PREVENTED the start of life, because he was jumping through Q's hoops, then he realized it and stopped the stuff that was making the anomaly.
correlate with supernovae rate? This is a interesting analysis and paper, although I think it is hard to draw the distinction when only two (or three, if you count bacteria over all time) clades have actually 'dominated' the earth, reptiles and mammals. I don't know enough about classification to also include the oceans, but it is my understanding that they contain relatively low biomass other than microorganisms. I guess you could consider some sort of insect or arthropod for both, but those have dominated fairly consistently with bacteria as far as I know.
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
That is indeed a pretty solid synopsis of "All Good Things". It should be emphasized though that the episode was completely paradoxical: the anomaly only started manifesting in the first place because the beam was fired to fix it. At the time it was hailed as a really strong Star Trek episode, but going back to it after watching seven seasons of the HMS Reset Button (Voyager), it's obvious that the writers were completely daft.
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The correct translation from this guy would be:
"I can't actually show that it's the cause of climate warming, so I'll put in a confusing sentence to make it seem that way."
He compares the climate change with we are currently experiencing to things that take a much longer time, and things that aren't happening at the rate he referrers to 500 million years ago.
If the Earth was currently being bombarded at the rate necessary for his claim, we would be seeing extinction events.
Classic denier.
Here is a break down of his points:
http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/tag/cosmic-rays/
with links to data and sources.
--
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HULK AGREES!
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The energy output of the sun is tied to the electric field strength of the surrounding galactic neighborhood, which fluctuates over time.
Indeed. I'm working on a unification for Electric Universe Theory and Time Cube Theory, which, if I can pull it off, should make me the Crank of the Century.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The claim is that more cosmic rays cause cloud formation, which reflects heat.
However, his mechanism is that nearby supernovae cause cooler climates (how???)
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/research/CLOUD-en.html
it's in my head
I don't think he's a "Classic denier." Most deniers' skepticism is based on cognitive-biased faith - this guy seems to have actually done considerable work to support his cognitive bias.
Cosmic rays are charged particles that bombard the Earth's atmosphere from outer space. Studies suggest they may have an influence on the amount of cloud cover through the formation of new aerosols (tiny particles suspended in the air that seed cloud droplets). This is supported by satellite measurements, which show a possible correlation between cosmic-ray intensity and the amount of low cloud cover. Clouds exert a strong influence on the Earth’s energy balance; changes of only a few per cent have an important effect on the climate.
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/research/CLOUD-en.html
it's in my head
Classic politically motivated Slashdot climate post.
The guy didn't say anything about current warming, carbon dioxide, human activities or anything else. He's saying that cosmic rays influence climate (they do), short term variation due to the sun's magnetic field have a fairly small effect (the opposite of the words you're trying to put in his mouth) and a bunch of supernovae going off nearby has a larger effect (not hard to believe).
Svensmark is the scientist whose controversial ideas ultimately led CERN to conduct its CLOUD experiment. The gist of his idea was: cosmic particle presence (more clouds, due to more substrate) and solar magnetic activity (less clouds, due to repelled particles) are amongst the driving factors --perhaps the primary one-- of climate volatility on Earth, because they control overall cloud cover.
CERN's conclusion? Svensmark was basically spot on with respect to cloud formation.
Make no mistake here. Clouds excersice materially high positive and negative feedback loops on climate. Whether it is overwhelmingly superior or merely predominant to carbon dioxide et al is the only point of contention.
In light of this, is any Slashdot reader surprised that proximity of supernovae, aka amount of cosmic particles, accepting the evidence that the latter have an impact on cloud cover and thus on climate, might have an impact on how life in thriving on Earth?
I found it a really strong episode, not for the plot (Which, like most trek, is BS) but for the way Q and Picard play off each other. TNG's best episodes often have a strong Q/Picard dynamic. My favourite being Tapestry, which had that *and* a half decent story around it.
Disclaimer: I am not a trekkie. Despite looking like your stereotypical example of one
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Let's see, on the one hand I have the opinion that almost every cosmologist holds, and the other I have the opinion of a Slashdotter.
I'm really torn on this one.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Effective immediately Al Gore is announcing a SuperNova Credits Exchange!
Taxes paid by every man women and child will stop the SuperNova's climate change effects!
It is illegal not to pay.
So you better not cheat on your SuperNova taxes or we will take away your Passport.
Oh yeah, we got ya covered.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Except that the person above you posted a link to the CERN site for CLOUD which includes a link to CLOUD's website (http://cloud.web.cern.ch/cloud/) which includes a link to their publications (http://cloud.web.cern.ch/cloud/People/Publications.html). All they have is some preliminary data from a prototype but still includes a link to the initial publication "Results from the CERN pilot CLOUD experiment" (http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/1635/2010/acp-10-1635-2010.html)
But that probably doesn't fit with what ever decoder ring you found at the bottom of your box of cocoa pebbles which rather than suggesting you drink more Ovaltine apparently claimed that CLOUD results are classified.
Yeah, Tapestry is probably my favourite Q episode and easily one of the strongest episodes in the whole franchise, not counting the really incredible DS9 pieces like In The Pale Moonlight (a title which has the distinction of being the only Batman reference in all of Star Trek.)
You've hit the nail on the head about characterization, though. 80s/90s/00s Star Trek was at its core a human drama, just in the context of science fiction. Ron D. Moore once said in an interview that in some episodes the writers didn't even write the actual technobabble; they just put the word 'tech' in the script and a science consultant filled it in before shooting. That's a major reason why so many episodes are resolved with one-hit deflector dish wonders; they didn't really work on integrating the sf into the story. There are lots of great counterexamples to this (one early Voyager episode is about a ride in a space elevator), but they're way too few in number.
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The odds are 10,000 to 1 against this unexpected link between cosmic rays and the variable state of the biosphere being just a coincidence, and it offers a new perspective on the connection between the evolution of the Milky Way and the entire history of life over the last 4 billion years,’ Dr Svensmark comments.
So I Googled it and found this article containing a refutation and further examples of over-reaching. I leave it to /. to comment on the accuracy of these links.
I'm not sure if you noticed, but this thread is about a particular excerpt from the story current under discussion.