Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
cerncourier.com
Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
1–10 of 90 posts
Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
#2Is this the Great Filter?
Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
#3[deleted]
Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
#4Is this the Great Filter?
Certainly seems like one of them, if this claim is true: "The Milky Way would therefore be among only 10% of all galaxies in the universe – the larger ones – that can sustain complex life in the long-term."
Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
#5Let's assume this happened tomorrow, and it took another 500 million for life to evolve to what we would consider intelligent. Would anything of our civilisation be left? What would be the best way to leave a record that we existed?
Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
#6This makes a lot of assumptions about extra-terrestrial life. This article assumes that all "life" depends on a protective ozone layer and that it's similar to life on Earth.
Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
#7can someone comment on the legitimacy/reliablity of the "Cern Courier". The article seems legit (no tin foil hats), but that font. woof, it makes it look super amateur.
Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
#8> The authors found previously that GRBs are more frequent in low-mass galaxies such as the Small Magellanic Cloud with a small fraction of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This reduces the GRB hazard in the Milky Way by a factor of 10 compared with the overall rate.
Smaller galaxies are deadlier, got it. Is this because GRBs tend to emanate from the galactic centre? And larger galaxies, having more stars further from the centre, have more "habitable" space? Or does it have to do with the higher frequency of heavy elements in large galaxies? If the latter, how do heavy element concentrations cause or moderate GRB activity?
Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
#9Let's assume this happened tomorrow, and it took another 500 million for life to evolve to what we would consider intelligent. Would anything of our civilisation be left? What would be the best way to leave a record that we existed?
Just keep going business as usual. Given that we have plenty of trilobite fossils from the Cambrian, might even expect future paleontologists to find some fossilized skulls.
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Paleobiology/CambrianFossils.htm
Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life
#10can someone comment on the legitimacy/reliablity of the "Cern Courier". The article seems legit (no tin foil hats), but that font. woof, it makes it look super amateur.