End of the world in 8000 years?

[kmguru]

Very interesting...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080310-mm-grb-us.html

What might happen

Although the pinwheel can't blast Earth apart like the Death Star from Star Wars — at least not from 8,000 light years away — it could still cause mass extinction or possibly even threaten life as we know it on our planet.

Gamma rays would not penetrate Earth's atmosphere well to burn the ground, but they would chemically damage the stratosphere. Melott estimates that if WR 104 were to hit us with a burst 10 seconds or so long, its gamma rays could deplete about 25 percent of the world's ozone layer, which protects us from damaging ultraviolet rays. In comparison, the recent human-caused thinning of the ozone layer, creating "holes" over the polar regions, have only been depletions of about 3 to 4 percent, he explained.

"So that would be very bad," Melott told SPACE.com. "You'd see extinctions. You might see food chain collapses in the oceans, might see agricultural crises with starvation."

Gamma ray bursts would also trigger smog formation that could blot out sunlight and rain down acid. However, at 8,000 light-years away, "there's probably not a large enough effect there for much of a darkening effect," Melott estimated. "It'd probably cut off 1 or 2 percent of total sunlight. It might cool the climate somewhat, but it wouldn't be a catastrophic ice age kind of thing."

[blobrana]

WR 104.kmz
Google Sky file (http://adrive.com/public/eb059af450a03ec5329b1672de4f992d4bc3b72c2f99c32b10 4b7373271d42e3.html) (1kb, kmz)

Position(2000): RA 18 02 04.07, Dec -23 37 41.2

[superstring01]

Judging by the rate of technological increase, and assuming that humanity survives the next 100 tumultuous years, we will easily be well past a K2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) level of development (and I'm betting on something along the lines of K3).

8,000 is a tremendous amount of time, technologically speaking. If you judge our development in the last 100 years, and the fact that technology makes the development of even more technology faster and easier, it's safe to assume that if we're still around (or our silicon and/or organic descendants) will have the ability to neutralize any such threat.

To the point: the limitless potential that comes from exponential construction abilities of nanotechnology allow for the consumption of and conversion of direct energy from the Sun (as well as other material from the planets, asteroids, etcetera) into a shield of sufficent capacity to protect the Earth from gamma rays.

Just as important, humans may not even be that "human" and may not even care for the care of Earth, having evolved well beyond such concerns and having left the Solar System for other horizons.

~String

[kmguru]

Judging by the rate of technological increase, and assuming that humanity survives the next 100 tumultuous years, we will easily be well past a K2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) level of development (and I'm betting on something along the lines of K3).

8,000 is a tremendous amount of time, technologically speaking. If you judge our development in the last 100 years, and the fact that technology makes the development of even more technology faster and easier, it's safe to assume that if we're still around (or our silicon and/or organic descendants) will have the ability to neutralize any such threat.

To the point: the limitless potential that comes from exponential construction abilities of nanotechnology allow for the consumption of and conversion of direct energy from the Sun (as well as other material from the planets, asteroids, etcetera) into a shield of sufficent capacity to protect the Earth from gamma rays.

Just as important, humans may not even be that "human" and may not even care for the care of Earth, having evolved well beyond such concerns and having left the Solar System for other horizons.



Sometimes, life imitates art. Looking at StarTrek in 500 years and extrapolating 8000 years...wow...we could not even imagine....except that robots will be the future.

Even in short range, like in Aurthur Clarke's 3001, we could be habitating in space and use the planet for food and energy and move everybody to the dark side of the beam for 10 minutes.....

We definitely need to develop a FTL communication method....

[eburacum45]

There seems to be a misunderstanding here. The article doesn't say anything about the end of the world in eight thousand years; this Wolf-Rayet binary is eight thousand light years away, but " it may explode any time within the next few hundred thousand years."

That doesn't mean we have eight thousand years to wait before we are in danger- it might have exploded 7999 years ago, and the shock wave might arrive next year. I am not saying it will, mind, but you must remember astronomers tend to ignore the light travel time.

In fact it will probably miss us by a safe margin- most of them do.

[kaneda]

The chance of hitting an Earth sized planet 8,000 light years away is incredibly small.

There is also the point that all heavenly bodies are in motion. We may have moved out of the way in a few tens of thousands of years time.

[Myles]

Should I buy into pork belly futures ?

[kmguru]

There seems to be a misunderstanding here. The article doesn't say anything about the end of the world in eight thousand years; this Wolf-Rayet binary is eight thousand light years away, but " it may explode any time within the next few hundred thousand years."

That doesn't mean we have eight thousand years to wait before we are in danger- it might have exploded 7999 years ago, and the shock wave might arrive next year. I am not saying it will, mind, but you must remember astronomers tend to ignore the light travel time.

In fact it will probably miss us by a safe margin- most of them do.

You are correct. We will never know what hit us until it does.....Which means, as technology improves, we should prepare a roof over our head as soon as possible - just in case. Like the earthquake in China....those idiots thought, it will never happen and built shoddy buildings that killed a lot of children. Sad...sad...sad...