Supernova Star Blast 'Could Wipe Out Earth'

A star is primed to explode in a blast that could wipe out the Earth, according to American astronomers.

The next blast from the T Pyxidis star is said to be overdue. Source: www.HubbleSite.org

A new study shows the star, called T Pyxidis, is much closer than previously thought at 3,260 light-years away - a short hop in galactic terms.

It is set to self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.

The blast from the thermonuclear explosion could strip away the Earth's ozone layer that keeps out deadly space radiation, scientists said.

The doomsday scenario was described by astronomers from Villanova University in Philadelphia.

They said the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite has shown them that T Pyxidis is really two stars, one called a white dwarf that is sucking in gas and steadily growing.

When it reaches a critical mass it will blow itself to pieces.

It will become as bright as all the other stars in the galaxy put together and shine like a beacon halfway across the universe.

The experts said the Hubble space telescope photographed the star gearing up for its big bang with a series of smaller blasts or "burps", called novas.

These explosions came regularly about every 20 years from 1890, but stopped after 1967.

So the next blast is very overdue, said scientists Edward M Sion, Patrick Godon and Timothy McClain at the American Astronomical Society in Washington.

Robin Scagell, vice-president of the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "The star may certainly become a supernova soon - but soon could still be a long way off, so don't have nightmares."

Link :
Link from Sky News

[edit on 6/1/2010 by shauny]

[edit on 6/1/2010 by shauny]

[edit on 6/1/2010 by shauny]

there is a great deal of things floating in space, chunks of rock, peices of Ice, clouds of gas and so fourth. Any blast would be absorbed, deflected or slowed down by the "interstellar medium"

your talking about 19,164,333,800,000,000 miles. there is no substantial evidence to suggests any force of any sort could make the journey, espeically from a single unsubstantiated blast.

Also, light is the only thing that can travel that fast, you would have to scale down travel time many magnitudes for the math to work out.

Think about the force of the blast and the length of time it would take to travel even .05 light years, it would be a couple of weeks at least, and the force moving through space would never be able to keep up its momentum enough.

reply to post by drsmooth23


This is already being discussed here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

but I would like to add that it may be true that a supernova 3000 light-years away may not adversely affect us, but another cosmic event associated with some supernovae -- a "Gamma Ray Burst" (or GRB) -- that happens 3000 light-years away could in fact "fry" all life on Earth if it was large enough and pointed in our direction.

S/F

The scary thing is that she may have already blew up 3,259.9 years ago and we'll see it first hand tomorrow!

reply to post by Signals


that is a very good point,from what they`re seeing through the hubble telescope and describing it in it`s stage now. it most probably has allready gone supernova,we`d have to be very unlucky to get hit from a gamma burst, but there`s allways a first time for everything.
there are that many more things to worry about on this planet, that a threat from space does not concern me that much yet

Technically speaking, in theory didn't this star blow up 3,260 years ago?

I know this might sound confusing but, the explosion already happened 3,260 years ago. The explosion takes 3,260 lights YEARS to reach us. Might 2012 be an occurrence by this?

I don't know

But what I do know is that the chance of this coming to us is slim. That star is billion^3 away. (about, I think).

So if that explodes, like what happened in my bathroom after school, we are somewhat DOOMED. NOOOOO