
A Binary Star Is About to Go Supernova and Could Produce a Gamma-Ray Burst - hardlianotion
https://www.sciencealert.com/this-jaw-dropping-binary-star-is-about-to-go-supernova-and-it-shouldn-t-even-be-here
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hateful
Time to uncomment that code Microsoft!
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18494690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18494690)

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maskedinvader
came to the thread to say exactly that and you beat me to it. upvoted :)

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24gttghh
>Of course, it's important to bear in mind that "just about to explode" means
something different in cosmic terms versus human terms. It could happen at any
time in the... next few hundred thousand years.

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daxorid
I don't know what sort of luminosity a GRB would have at 8k LY. But if it's
strong enough to be an ELE, that's still a pretty short timeframe, in case the
expected GRB jets will be pointed at us. We'd need to not only get off the
planet, but to another star system entirely.

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mabbo
Out of curiosity, just what would happen to a person standing on Earth,
staring up at the night sky right at the moment that a GRB jet hit the planet?

Also, how wide, in terms of arcseconds, is the jet? Is it a narrow laser beam
that has no chance of actually hitting a planet, or is it wide enough that
anything within 30 degrees of north is going to be sterilized?

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benmarks
Most likely (as in, _very_ most likely) not bad [1], though it's theorized
that the second largest mass extinction event on Earth may have been due to a
GRB [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-
ray_burst#Rate_of_occurr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-
ray_burst#Rate_of_occurrence_and_potential_effects_on_life) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician%E2%80%93Silurian_ex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician%E2%80%93Silurian_extinction_events)

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wiredfool
This is a better article (From bad astronomy) about the same thing:
[https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/is-this-cosmic-sprinkler-
surro...](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/is-this-cosmic-sprinkler-surrounding-
galaxys-next-gamma-ray-burst)

In particular, the sciencealert article mentions "very old" Wolf-Rayet stars,
which is a little strange given that they only last a few million years, and
certainly are not old on any scale used for stellar lifetimes.

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ianai
I’m wondering what sort of physics research this opens up before the burst. I
imagine it’s still producing energy levels otherwise difficult to create.

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everdev
About to?

> It could happen at any time in the... next few hundred thousand years.

I understand this is imminent on a cosmological timescale, but the title is
click-baity.

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cryptonector
It's not click-baity. Any headline like this can only mean "about to on a
cosmological scale", and I understood it as such immediately, and I also felt
excited, and the excitement was warranted because the news really is exciting.

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spookthesunset
> Any headline like this can only mean "about to on a cosmological scale"

Sorry, I also read it as "any day now" and I'm pretty sure anybody who is a
layman on this topic also did the same. The title is plenty click-baity.

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lb1lf
-I had the unexpected pleasure of sitting next to a geologist on a domestic flight a few years ago; he explained about an unstable mountainous area he’d surveyed, stressing that it would come crashing down at some point.

I inquired as to /when/ we could expect this to happen, as it sounded
imminent.

«Oh, any day now - definitely in the next 30-50,000 years!»

And here I am, with project deadlines measured in hours...

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logotype
Maybe the explosion has already happened? But we still wouldn’t be able to see
it yet due to the distance and speed of light...

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dotancohen
That is called "not happened yet" in our lightcone.

It's an easy concept to grasp, but many people resist considering an event to
have not yet happened when it has not yet crossed our lightcone. If you are
really interested, then I suggest Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of
Time.

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bsmitty5000
Isn't there two events here: the actual supernova and our observation of the
supernova. So the actual supernova event could have occurred but our
observation is when it crosses our 'lightcone'?

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btilly
The issue is that "now" is not well-defined since it depends on the reference
frame. Therefore what we consider "already happened" another observer may
consider "still in the future".

All observers will agree on the order of events if and only if the light from
each event traveled to the next before the next happened.

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emmett
I’m not enough of an astrophysicist to do this math myself, but what would
this kind of burst look like from Earth? Observable w a telescope? W the naked
eye? Enter a bomb shelter and save yourself?

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ChuckMcM
It could put on a nice show as one did for Kepler
([https://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/03/24/hey-where-are-
all...](https://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/03/24/hey-where-are-all-the-
milky-way-supernovas/)) but generally it wouldn't be much more than a
curiosity for non-astronomers[1].

If it does generate a gamma ray burst, then that is a more interesting
phenomena. Depending on whether or not it is pointed in our direction, we
might see more or less energy from it directly. After travelling 8000 light
years and passing through all the dust between us and the planet, it would be
seriously attenuated and unlikely to cause any destruction or even noticeable
effects on earth.

[1] Astrologers on the other hand, it could be the sign that the end of the
world is nigh :-)

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hardlianotion
If it is pointed directly at us, 8000 light years away is close enough to make
the gamma ray burst a possible extinction event.

[https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/wr-104-nearby-gamma-ray-
burst](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/wr-104-nearby-gamma-ray-burst)

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jackhack
>If it is pointed directly at us

Is a gamma burst directional, or spherical in term of high-energy emission?

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wiredfool
Directional, and this one is apparently pointed about 30 degrees away from us.

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AnimalMuppet
Can you point me to a source for that "about 30 degrees away from us"? I
haven't seen it.

And, _how_ directional? All the energy is spread across half the sky? Only 10
degrees? Or only one degree? Is 30 degrees enough for it to completely miss
us? Mostly miss us? Or are we still in the danger cone?

Finally, in a binary star system, is that 30 degrees going to change as the
stars orbit each other? (Worse, IIRC, there's a third, more distant star. Can
it change the orbit of the other two in a way that shifts that 30 degrees?)

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wiredfool
It’s mentioned in this article: [https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/is-this-cosmic-
sprinkler-surro...](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/is-this-cosmic-sprinkler-
surrounding-galaxys-next-gamma-ray-burst) .

My impression is that a GRB beam is on the order of a few degrees, but I can’t
find that reference now.

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baddash
From the article itself:

"Of course, it's important to bear in mind that 'just about to explode' means
something different in cosmic terms versus human terms. It could happen at any
time in the... next few hundred thousand years."

So a clickbait title.

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ProAm
Only to your relative position.

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prolikewh0a
,

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lalaithion
False; it is not the same time everywhere. Two people travelling at different
speeds will disagree about what order events happened in, and there is no
privileged reference frame.

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AnimalMuppet
They will disagree about what order _some_ events happen in. But those events
are causally unrelated to each other, so it doesn't matter what order they
happened in.

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8bitsrule
Don't think GRBs are all that worrisome, by comparison.

It has recently been calculated that there is a 50-percent chance that a GRB-
induced mass extinction on Earth has occurred in the past 500 million years.
This abstract: (
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.2506](https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.2506) ) links to
a PDF of the entire paper.

So the probability in a human lifetime is magnitudes less than a supervolcano
event or _big_ asteroid impact.

According to (
[https://phys.org337426962/pdf.pdf](https://phys.org337426962/pdf.pdf) ): "The
researchers don't believe a GRB striking the Earth could penetrate the
atmosphere, but do believe one could destroy the ozone layer".

We started to do that to ourselves more than once, not long ago. We are by far
the highest-probability danger to Earth life. Chlorofluorocarbons: check.
Nuclear weapons: check.

Back to less-likely (inhuman) radiation sources: In the late 8th century, tree
rings in the northern hemisphere 'recorded' a one-year atmospheric increase of
1% in carbon-14 ... 20 times normal. Cause: 'an extremely intense burst of
high-energy radiation'.

Cause unknown, but could have been ... a coronal mass ejection (the Sun).

( [https://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-radiation-burst-
recor...](https://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-radiation-burst-recorded-in-
tree-rings-1.10768) )

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shadykiller
With this close proximity, isn't there a good chance we may be hit directly
with the gamma ray burst ? Shouldn't we be alarmed about another possible mass
extinction event ?

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Zelphyr
What could we do about it if we did find we were going to get hit directly
with it?

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cthalupa
The GRB starts, from my understanding, when the core collapses - and that only
takes seconds. And then travels at light speed. The shockwave making its way
through the rest of the star can take hours, and you might see the explosion
take months. But the GRB would hit us before we would see the shockwave, or
explosion.

Without the ability to accurately determine when a supernova will occur, we
will effectively have no real warning we're about to be hit.

Protecting ourselves from it is also well beyond our current technology. We'd
either need to build enough physical shielding to block it from hitting earth,
or we'd need to leave our solar system.

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agoodthrowaway
I always get excited when I read these things that I might be lucky enough to
see a supernova in the sky in my lifetime (provided the gamma ray burst misses
us!).

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jakelazaroff
I feel like being interested in space is an exercise in being simultaneously
enthralled and disappointed. This sounds awesome! But, like with basically
everything space-related, the scale is too immense for a human lifetime:

 _> Of course, it's important to bear in mind that "just about to explode"
means something different in cosmic terms versus human terms. It could happen
at any time in the... next few hundred thousand years._

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sidcool
About to go in cosmic terms would mostly mean not earlier than a millennium.

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cxromos
about?

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tehaugmenter
I would like to see Neil Degrasse Tyson do a season 2 of Cosmos with all these
new discoveries. We're only going to keep discovering more.

