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Originally posted by PimpyMcgibbins
21000 light years maybe a long way away but if that thing explodes- who knows what kind of chaos it can send and how fast it can come at us...especially if we're rotating closer and closer to it...It sounds dangerous to me but theres nothing we'll be able to do about it...somethings are just meant to be.
Would anyone really be surprised if more catastrophes happened??? Look at recent events...I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg...
A pulsar is a neutron star which emits beams of radiation that sweep through the earth's line of sight. Like a black hole, it is an endpoint to stellar evolution. The "pulses" of high-energy radiation we see from a pulsar are due to a misalignment of the neutron star's rotation axis and its magnetic axis. Pulsars pulse because the rotation of the neutron star causes the radiation generated within the magnetic field to sweep in and out of our line of sight with a regular period.
Originally posted by orionthehunter
I think the distance was pretty well explained. 21,000 light years is the distance light travels in 21,000 years here on Earth. So if that pulsar exploded with tremendous force and was powerful enough to affect life on the Earth and it did it 20,996 years ago, it might have an impact here in 4 years in 2012 when the light from that explosion reaches us. If it didn't explode exactly 20,996 years ago, I don't think anyone needs to worry about it. However maybe another one we haven't found exploded closer to us and we just don't see it yet. That's what you need to worry about if you really want to worry about something you have no power over.
Originally posted by botiemaster
Wow so many who are oblivious to the meaning of 21,000 light years...
I got one question. How come the world didn't have an end when PX came around last time? Or the surely multiple times it's come around every 3600 years? I guess life is just that bad to the bone to recover, huh. You know, there may be a PX. It just might come around every 3600 years. But it damn sure hasn't destroyed this planet thus far, and I doubt it will the next trip whenever it comes around. IF it even exists which I doubt seeing that the entire PX basis regards what just one man says he can translate, which I find amusing that one man in the world has been able to "translate" ancient stones and people take his word as gospel.
To have a secondary view though albeit less serious and more for the entertainment value, if this planet exists, or rogue star or whatever you want to believe in, and it's come around and caused chaos here on earth multiple of times or perhaps countless number of times, obviously it hasn't sent earth to the pits of hell yet and probably never will. The earth survived, the world didn't end, life went on. So, why so much sweat over the bloody thing? Oh, I know why. Fear mongers pushing videos and books scaring everyone to death to make money, and then they have their own personal fans who go a step further and like to make their websites and youtube videos with fancy pictures and animations showing the doom that awaits us. Yeah..