crocodile deathroll

What is only next in explosive power to the Big Bang? the answer may well be what causes these gamma ray bursts
And it's official, gamma ray bursts appear to be caused by massive black hole hypernovas when a huge star collapses into a black hole from the other side to the observable universe when the bidirectional gammas rays jets are pointing directly towards us, but they are too far away for the unidirectional visible light for any one to see them.
If one of those black hole hypernovas had erupted in the Magellani Clouds 175,000 light years away then would outshine the full moon. It probable would not hurt us but the omnidirectional visible light it would emit would of course make it a very spectacular sight, but if we were unlucky enough to have one of its two bipolar gamma ray jets pointed directly us then it would outshine the sun and kill us all with its deadly radiation. Even several millions of light years away would be a major concern. But as the inverse square law the chance increase four fold as we double the distance then there is a much stronger chance will detect one, and coupled with the fact the early and distant universe was a very different place full of dark stellar nurseries and super and short lived massive primordial stars but due to the inverse square law they will fortunately be four times dimmer each time we double the distance, so a the relatively save distance of 10 billion light years away they will be virtually harmless to most of us, unless you are a bit susceptible the cancer, and even a mild gamma ray dose can do that.
I just had a thought. Since we are only observing the presence of these black holes by virtue of the fact that have directed a narrow beam of light towards earth, then there would many time more black holes which we will never know exists because chances are most of them did direct their gamma ray jets towards us. So no gamma ray bursts, no evidence they exist, even though they do.
<a href="http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/Press/Gamma.asp" target="_blank">http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/Press/Gamma.asp</a>

fando

To me, it is exciting news rather than scary. I've a degree in Astronomy and am quite familiar with numerous ways that the cosmos outside of the Kuiper belt can do us in. It's not just an expanseless void out there, many things are
capable of radiating us to oblivion. But space is vast and the probability of any of
these scenarios happening anytime soon is virtually zilch.

For instance, there was a paper a few years ago that said the solar system was doomed to wander into an interstellar cloud with a high enough density to strip our atmosphere through radiation pressure or somesuch. I don't know the state of the theory today, but we aren't reaching that cloud for another 50 million years. I don't know about you, but I'm not especially worried about such a potential hazzard.

As for the gamma ray beam hazzard, the rate of supernova explosions in the Galaxy is known well enough to estimate the probability of us being in the axis of such a beam. I'm not going to do the math, but I'm pretty sure the results will be insignificant, as always. If we did end up in such a beam, then oh well. There will be nothing we can do about it, especially if the radiation pressure or intensity is high enough to cause significant damage to the planet. Such a beam will certainly have a large enough cross section to envelop the Earth, if not the Solar System.

For the record, I'm much more worried about interplanetary space junk striking the Earth. That happens way too often!

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: fando ]</p>