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originally posted by: beezzer
a reply to: stormbringer1701
The thing is, if we're seeing it, it IS frying us. It could have super-nova'd 4,000 years ago. What we're seeing is light that is 8,000 years old.
It could have super-nova'd 8,000 years ago and we could be in for one heck of a sunrise.
originally posted by: JadeStar
It is not going to fry us, it is not pointed towards us and even if it were you must realize the Earth has a relatively thick atmosphere.
There have been events like this in Earth's past, some of them closer than Eta Car and we know this because they left their mark in tree rings but life persists and so would we.
So the takeaway is:
1) It's not pointed at us. It is of huge interest because there has not been a supernova this close in the era of modern astronomy so all of us astronomers are very excited but its no reason to go all "Doomsday Prepper".
2) Even if it was pointed at us other than giving the Earth a worldwide "Northern Lights" show"for several months little else would be noticeable.
3) If you just like being afraid of everything there are events transpiring right here on Earth which could lead to doomsday far more than Eta Car.
But if such a GRB did hit earth’s atmosphere, says Adrian Melott, a physicist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, it would likely cause a 50 percent increase in solar UVB radiation which would not only disrupt photosynthesis among marine and freshwater plankton, but also likely precipitate some sort of broader extinction event.
“You would first notice a 10-second blue flash in the upper atmosphere,” said Melott, “but then the damage would be done.”
Not only would the destruction of the ozone open the door for lethal ultraviolet (UV) solar radiation to make it all the way down to earth’s land masses and shallow oceans, such an event would have also destroyed molecular nitrogen in our atmosphere. According to the hypothesis, this would have led to the creation of a brownish, nitrogen dioxide-based haze; one potentially capable of global cooling of the sort that could create continent-sized ice sheets.
Such glaciations would have been out of the norm at the time, since earth was in the midst of an “intense greenhouse interval” when atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are thought to have been as much as 22 times what they are today.
In an effort to test the hypothesis, Melott and Brian Thomas, a physicist at Washburn University in Topeka, found that computations of the extinction pattern precisely matched that found in the fossil record, if the burst went off over the Earth’s South Pole. Melott notes that this represented a successful first step in assessing the idea.
the govts of the world would be ineffective and probably just conceal the facts from the public so they could eek out a few more years of control.
originally posted by: Rob48
a reply to: stormbringer1701
the govts of the world would be ineffective and probably just conceal the facts from the public so they could eek out a few more years of control.
Again with the "the government would hide it from us" rubbish. That simply couldn't happen. The kind of observations we are talking about are the kind of observations that any amateur astronomer can make. How can you hide a (currently) fifth-magnitude star's brightness variations from the general public, exactly?
originally posted by: Dr1Akula
Another chance to see the ''world ending'' in our lifetime fades away,
but don't lose hope... we might just get what we wish for, by another upcoming event,
....fingers crossed!
originally posted by: my1percent
Could this be the story that was around a little while ago about a star in the western sky that had become bright ?
1%
"For 50 years there was talk that Eta Carinae is a cool star of maximum 15 000 degrees Celsius, then it should be only neutral helium atoms on its surface. But based on the data observed, John Steiner (professor of IAG / USP) showed that one month before the blackout, is equivalent to 5,200 times fulguration sunlight only in extreme ultraviolet, which produces He ++ "explained Damineli .
The data were published in another article in The Astrophysical Journal.
Then Thomas Madura, postdoctoral Astrophysics Division Science NASA proposed in the new paper, published in 2013 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, that the emission of He ++ could be explained by the existence of a hole in the photosphere of biggest star. Ions would not surface, so subfotosfera but the star where the temperature is much higher.