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Feb. 18th, 2005 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheBrightest galactic flash ever detected hits Earth
A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.
The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
The commotion was caused by a special variety of neutron star known as a magnetar. These fast-spinning, compact stellar corpses -- no larger than a big city -- create intense magnetic fields that trigger explosions. The blast was 100 times more powerful than any other similar eruption witnessed, said David Palmer of Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of several researchers around the world who monitored the event with various telescopes.
"Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
[...] "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event," said Rob Fender of Southampton University in the UK. "We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the sun emits in 100,000 years."
A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.
The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
The commotion was caused by a special variety of neutron star known as a magnetar. These fast-spinning, compact stellar corpses -- no larger than a big city -- create intense magnetic fields that trigger explosions. The blast was 100 times more powerful than any other similar eruption witnessed, said David Palmer of Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of several researchers around the world who monitored the event with various telescopes.
"Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
[...] "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event," said Rob Fender of Southampton University in the UK. "We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the sun emits in 100,000 years."
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 01:04 am (UTC)They noted that mega-gamma ray bursts observed in faraway galaxies had enough energy to sterilize their entire galaxy of any life that might be there. And how frequently are such mega-events observed? About three times a day.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 01:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 06:09 am (UTC)... which is a rather alarmist thing to say to a non-scientific audience, which might not know that there are no neutron stars within anything close to 10 light-years of the earth, and only 12 stellar objects of any kind (counting the Sun).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 06:48 am (UTC)Luckily, since space is so sparse, events like this have little chance of affecting things here. As mentioned, anything close (like a 10 light-year radius is close! that's freekin' huge, but still pretty empty) is toast, but we are fairly safe.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-21 01:39 am (UTC)