Death Star


Nature news has an interesting bit about a death star pointing straight at earth.

You see that spiral? that a binary star system about to explode, well "about" in astrophysics is actually a precise unit of time that means "in a 100,000 years". The death-star is 8,000 light years away.

The scary part is the spiral pattern you see is symmetric and therefore you are staring straight down its axis. The article points out that a certain type of explosion (spherical) would dissipate the effect. However another type with a burst of gamma-rays along the Z-axis would be equivalent to a laser beam hitting us: no dilution of the effect.

What then? mass extinction. First the ozone layer breaks down, then we wash in UV radiation and from there on it is game-over, the same as nuclear war on earth. Apparently a massive UV wash/gamma ray wash has been proposed as a reason for mass-extinction on earth in the past, akin to the "meteor" hypothesis.

From Nature:

Caught in the beam

A mass-extinction event on Earth some 450 million years ago might have been triggered by a gamma-ray burst. Adrian Melott at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, who suggested this in 2003, says that the new observations of WR 104 are big news because this is the first candidate system spotted that could produce a similar Earth-walloping gamma-ray burst in the future. “If it were a full gamma-ray burst and we were caught in the beam, the effects would be pretty severe,” says Melott. “My guess is that there would be a lot of death from it, rather like a small-scale nuclear war.”

A gamma-ray beam might not kill us all immediately. First there would be a bright flash, possibly blinding people, says Melott, then after a few hours the effects would begin in earnest.

The gamma rays would break up molecules in the atmosphere, producing particular oxides of nitrogen that would start to eat up the ozone layer after a few hours, says Melott. Within a few days a quarter of the ozone layer would be destroyed, he suggests.

The ozone destruction would allow through enough ultraviolet light to cause severe radiation damage to plants and people. The nitrogen oxides would also cause acid rain that could kill off plants and algae.
In a spin

But it is impossible to predict whether WR 104 will produce a gamma-ray burst, or when it might happen. For it to occur, the star has to be spinning fast enough to make an axis for the gamma-ray beam to emerge. “Here is where things get a bit more complicated and murky,” says Tuthill, who says he doesn’t know whether WR104 is spinning fast enough.

The fact that this is a binary system could mean that the spin is high, says gamma-ray expert Craig Wheeler at the University of Texas at Austin. “In a binary system the two stars yank each other around and spin each other up,” he says. But Wheeler says he isn't yet scared of what is rapidly becoming known as the Death Star. “I’m not going to worry about it at all.”

There are, certainly, more concrete dangers to worry about, and many questions to answer before we all duck for cover. “WR 104 is now in the last-known stable phase of a massive star. It should explode as a supernova within a few hundred thousand years. Of course, this could mean tomorrow, we have no way of telling,” says Tuthill.


Comments

Roy Russo said…
Quick! Someone get Al Gore on the phone!
Anonymous said…
Well, this gives a new definition to the "axis of evil". Quick someone call Dubya, let's invade WR104!!!
Juha Lindfors said…
It is an alien race clearing the space for new intergalactic highway, incidentally called highway number WR104.
adt43wt342 said…
he he

this blog is getting funnier and full of clever references by the minute.
Anonymous said…
Well, the star might explode tomorrow and destroy earth 8000 years from now. Or, it might have already exploded 7999 years ago, and the gamma ray will reach us next year. We do not really know.

But what are the chances for *two* gamma rays to hit earth in bull's eye in the past couple millions of years?
adt43wt342 said…
Dr Yuan,

Ah yeah, that simple math fact had escaped me. Thanks for the clarification I will be packing.

Seriously though,

1/ how long does the explosion take, is there really a "shock wave" of rays or is there a gradual ascend?
2/ I don't remember many things that can shield earth from gamma rays... If there was a hollywood movie of this, what would the shield be made of? a giant geo stationary "water filled contact lens" for earth.
Juha Lindfors said…
Time to go live at an ocean bottom :-D
adt43wt342 said…
Oh yeah!

The bottom the ocean, of course! that works well with the global warming anyway. Also we will need a lot of solar energy stuff just to keep going. Phyto-placton will be king. I remember reading about free-floating DNA strands that gave species photosynthesis under water...

Problem is we will starve to death unless we find a way to create all that food under water... sushi and algae of course! At least a UV washed atmosphere will be energy reach. How deep do we need to live underwater anyway. How much water will be needed to absorb all the gamma and UV?
Juha Lindfors said…
I can feel a script for Waterworld 2 coming up... ;-)

On the deep sea DNA, Craig Venter and team (behind the recent announcement on creating first synthetic life) claimed that they found millions of new genes down there that are nowhere present in currently analyzed plants and animals. So who knows? Makes good fodder for Hollywood at least :-)
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