The Real Death Star

Originally posted by eriktheawful

Originally posted by cheesy
tq so mugh sir for share this bright information..and i would like to ask..

if the wolfeye star explode what the speed of the gama ray spread and reach earth? if there is a planet like jupiter block the ray before reach earth would the earth harm by this ray too? tq2 so much

wow, looks like ATS went a little crazy on your postings,

The GRB is released at the same time that the star goes Hypernova. The gamma rays would reach here at the same time as the visible light (gamma rays are electromagnetic energy...just of much, much higher frequency than light).

As for Jupiter blocking the rays, I'm afraid that won't work. I realize that my OP might be a little misleading in that I talk specifically about these rays hitting the Earth.

The truth is: the rays would hit our entire solar system.

The other problem is Jupiter does not ever occlude (get in front of) WR 104 in it's orbit around the sun.

haha tq sir for tou explanation..very kind of you..keep spreading educational info like this..well done

This is awesome, thanks!! I believe OP and other both mentioned the "big one" being likely in the ne?t 100 years...is that truly what they're saying? I'll have to check it out more on that front.

What I was thinking is, we know where this beast is. Can't we "see its future" or more accurately, see its nearer past, using Hubble, or another far-reaching scope of some type? Like,if a telescope can see it as if "only" 1,000 light years away, then we. Oumd keep an eye trained on it, and then know that humanity has 7,000 years left before we need to bug out of Earth.

Or is that not how it works? Like if Hubble can see at 10 feet what a human can see at 1 foot, would you cut the measurement of "light years" distance by 90%? If that is how the long-view works in relation to time, then there should be plenty of warning. Not plenty as in enough to do something about it, but plenty as in enough time to know whether to blow the retirement account, whether to buy the 30 year roof shingles, or save a few bucks on the 10-year shingles. Or can our instruments see so much further that they could see what is 8,000 light years distance away and peek into the light from that object many years more bear, possibly being able to say with certainty that the GRB would not reach here for at least 7,500 years?

Awesome post mate but have to say that while i was reading it, it kinda made me think all those tunnels they make underground and all those trucks carrying... things inside. Plus the norwegian ark with all the plant seeds.

Just saying

No point worrying about things we can't do anything to stop them happening.

This star is some 8000 light years away so, if we were to see it explode tomorrow, it actually exploded at least 8000 of our years ago. Absolutely nothing anyone could do about it and given the accuracy needed to score a bullseye on a target so far away, our odds of being missed aren't too bad at all.

I thought this thread would be about Mimas, Saturn's Moon.




Cool OP, though!

Thats interesting, good OP.

The duration of the blast seems to be small enough that only the side of the planet immediately facing the blast wave at the point of arrival would perish. If thats true, while horrendous, it wouldn't necessarily be a total extinction event?

Its for reasons like this we should be pushing with the whole weight of humanity to be multi-planet as soon as possible.

A little reminder : the earth is round! This means when the short gamma ray burst hits the earth half the earth is protected being on the opposite side. At this point the people on that side have to make sure they don't go out in the midday sun once the earth rotates around because of the ozone problem. We will survive though! Don't forget the earth is also round in the other direction (north south) and this affects the amount of solar radiation per sq m. So the regions nearer the poles are safer than those near the equator. Basically we move to canada, scotland, sweden, norway and russia !!! I'm already there

reply to post by eriktheawful


OK...WR 104 is 8K light years away from us. And viewed with deep space scopes, it's still there...or rather the light or x-rays we see coming from it using the space scope tells us it's still there.

This means, if the star went nova today, it would be 8000 years before the Gamma rays would strike the Earth, since it takes light an Earth year to travel 1 light year, 8000 light years equals 8000 years breathing space.

We can design a LOT of protection in 8000 years, even something huge, like a Dyson sphere around the Earth, or some similar kind of physical shield in orbit.

If not, something Earth based, even portable suits or building cladding made from who knows what exotic meta-materials could be engineered, if we had enough warning.

Having said that though, knowing how TPTB and the money people work today on building their own power and financial base, they'd probably say it was too expensive to build planetary protection even if we knew we were going to get hit.

Originally posted by Hellas
I thought this thread would be about Mimas, Saturn's Moon.

Cool OP, though!

Iapetus is more like the Death Star...here.

That is one way to describe a Supernova/Hypernova. You gotta love the jet, It's quite amazing. The same type of explosions also created things. Like the elements that created our planets, and the iron running threw our blood.

Originally posted by yorkshirelad
A little reminder : the earth is round! This means when the short gamma ray burst hits the earth half the earth is protected being on the opposite side. At this point the people on that side have to make sure they don't go out in the midday sun once the earth rotates around because of the ozone problem. We will survive though! Don't forget the earth is also round in the other direction (north south) and this affects the amount of solar radiation per sq m. So the regions nearer the poles are safer than those near the equator. Basically we move to canada, scotland, sweden, norway and russia !!! I'm already there

Would the Gamma ray burst hitting the poles (and removing a large part of the Ozone layer) cause the ice caps to melt?

Even if you got to the 'dark side of the Earth', you'd probably drown from the mega tsunamis from the flood waters.

reply to post by dogstar23


I'm afraid that's now how it works.

Hubble works by gathering light that is reaching us. So when we look at WR 104, that light is 8,000 years old. The only way we could see light from it that isn't that old would be to move closer to it.

reply to post by MysterX


Let's suppose it exploded 7999 years, 11 months ago and the gamma ray burst remains tightly focussed at that amazing distance, and also that in an incredible defiance of probability, it's aimed precisely at earth's location a month from now. Whatcha gonna do about it?

About all we'd have as an advance warning is the neutrino detectors showing unprecedented activity and not enough time to even pack up and head for the bunker even if we had that option.

Personally, I'd rather worry about things that I can actually defend against.

If people are actually losing sleep over this I could make a killing selling GRB doomsday insurance plans

Originally posted by yorkshirelad
A little reminder : the earth is round! This means when the short gamma ray burst hits the earth half the earth is protected being on the opposite side. At this point the people on that side have to make sure they don't go out in the midday sun once the earth rotates around because of the ozone problem. We will survive though! Don't forget the earth is also round in the other direction (north south) and this affects the amount of solar radiation per sq m. So the regions nearer the poles are safer than those near the equator. Basically we move to canada, scotland, sweden, norway and russia !!! I'm already there

Actually GRBs produced by a star going hypernova are long GRBs, not short ones.

It's thought the short ones are produced by stars being gobbled up by a black hole.

We once detected a GRB that lasted 2 1/2 months!

A unique gamma ray emission event, GRB 110328A, lasting more than two and a half months was observed starting March 28, 2011, originating from the center of a small galaxy at redshift z = 0.3534. The event is interpreted as a supermassive black hole devouring a star, most likely a white dwarf,[44] and emitting its beam of radiation towards Earth. It could thus be viewed as a temporarily active blazar (a type of quasar)

Source

A long enough duration burst close enough to us would remove enough of our ozone that it would be devistating to life here on Earth. The burst hitting us can produce nitrogen dioxide and if it produced enough, the amount of sun light would drop plunging us into a "Cosmic Winter"

There is a theory that the Ordovician-Silurian Extinction Event may have been triggered by a GRB:

A small minority of scientists have suggested that the initial extinctions could have been caused by a gamma ray burst originating from a hypernova within 6,000 light years of Earth (in a nearby arm of the Milky Way Galaxy). A ten-second burst would have stripped the Earth's atmosphere of half of its ozone almost immediately, exposing surface-dwelling organisms, including those responsible for planetary photosynthesis, to high levels of ultraviolet radiation.[11][12][13][14] Although the hypothesis is consistent with patterns at the onset of extinction, there is no unambiguous evidence that such a nearby gamma ray burst ever happened.

Source

But there's not a lot of evidence left behind to support the theory.

Still, humans with our intelligence do have a unique ability to be able to adapt and find ways to protect ourselves unlike other species.

You've gotta love Wolf Rayet stars, they're here for a good time not a long time.

As for GRB's, they were only discovered by chance, a satellite used to monitor Russian nuclear tests picked up a spike on its' sensors, but it didn't originate from earth. It took years to figure out what caused it.

reply to post by MysterX


Thats if there is any ice on the poles left to melt.

There will be an extinction event at some point. Be it natural or self inflicted, either way, theres not a lot we can do about it, even preparation is pointless as you dont want to survive such a thing if theres no food left. Just let the cycle of life go on, and eventually another sentient species will arise. Let's hope they do not have the same flaws that human beings do.

Originally posted by Pilgrum
reply to post by MysterX

 

Let's suppose it exploded 7999 years, 11 months ago and the gamma ray burst remains tightly focussed at that amazing distance, and also that in an incredible defiance of probability, it's aimed precisely at earth's location a month from now. Whatcha gonna do about it?

About all we'd have as an advance warning is the neutrino detectors showing unprecedented activity and not enough time to even pack up and head for the bunker even if we had that option.

Personally, I'd rather worry about things that I can actually defend against.

If people are actually losing sleep over this I could make a killing selling GRB doomsday insurance plans

edit on 9/6/2013 by Pilgrum because: (no reason given)

That's not how i understand it.

Using a space telescope like Hubble (but others are more suited to searching for GRBs) to view distant objects like WR 104, we are effectively looking back through time.

If we see an object 8000 LY away, we are looking back through time to a period 8000 years ago. And since the light and other EM we can see using the scope is still visible, it means the star has yet to go super or hyper nova, as we see it.

The light or more importantly the radiation from that star, would take 8000 years to reach and threaten us, as it's still there and hasn't exploded yet (from our point of view, 8000 years away)

When talking about distances in terms of Light Years, you may as well think in terms of actual years.

At the speed of light, the GRB would not strike the Earth (even if we were unlucky enough to be in the path of it's focused beam) for 8000 years AFTER we see it explode.

Another way of thinking about it, is to use our own Star, Sol as the example.

If Sol went Supernova right now, it would take 8 more minutes for us to be destroyed from it's effects, as that's how long the EM would take to reach us on Earth. Same thing with the 'GRB star'.

Originally posted by Firefly_
reply to post by MysterX

 

Thats if there is any ice on the poles left to melt.

There will be an extinction event at some point. Be it natural or self inflicted, either way, theres not a lot we can do about it, even preparation is pointless as you dont want to survive such a thing if theres no food left. Just let the cycle of life go on, and eventually another sentient species will arise. Let's hope they do not have the same flaws that human beings do.

I think of it like energy systems here on Earth today.

There's a lot we can do about delivering clean energy to every corner of this planet in abundance, but the money people don't have the forsight or will to spend their hoards to do so.

We could also create space based protection systems that would mitigate a lot of the negative effects of a GRB aimed at Earth too, but i wonder, even with sufficient warning if the people with the power and the money would wish or even attempt to construct planetary protection, as opposed to their own individual protection facilities.

A series of space shield, positioned far out in space between the GRB and Earth could absorb and dissipate a large amount of the radiation, acting as a shield and being positioned far enough away from Earth, it wouldn't have to be particularly large.

It would have to be composed of Gamma radiation absorbing or dissipating materials though, probably Graphene based or other nano-metamaterial yet to be engineered.

But if the life of every living thing on Earth was at stake, there'd be no logical reason not to build and position such a series of shields.

I thought Betelgeuse is a red giant, and that it will die relatively easy, by losing it's outer shell of gas and leave a white dwarf star... But it could have blown already, since it takes a while for us to see that.

Eta-Carina isn't a threat to us, I've read. The two gas plumes are left overs from an earlier burb, when it lost a lot mass already. Beautiful picture huh.

A gamma ray burst has to be directed to us and that's a pretty small target to hit. I think were save from the it.

Lets worry about the extinction event already taking place as we speak. The Shocking Reality of Modern Day Extinction.,

Haha.

Cool thread by the way !

Originally posted by MysterX
That's not how i understand it.

Using a space telescope like Hubble (but others are more suited to searching for GRBs) to view distant objects like WR 104, we are effectively looking back through time.

If we see an object 8000 LY away, we are looking back through time to a period 8000 years ago. And since the light and other EM we can see using the scope is still visible, it means the star has yet to go super or hyper nova, as we see it.

The light or more importantly the radiation from that star, would take 8000 years to reach and threaten us, as it's still there and hasn't exploded yet (from our point of view, 8000 years away)

When talking about distances in terms of Light Years, you may as well think in terms of actual years.

At the speed of light, the GRB would not strike the Earth (even if we were unlucky enough to be in the path of it's focused beam) for 8000 years AFTER we see it explode.

I hope to not seem rude here, but that's not how it works. Gamma Rays travel at the speed of light too, so the moment we see it explode is the moment we get bathed in its radiation.