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Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

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21–30 of 90 posts

Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

#21
post #19

Is the gamma-ray burst a spherical field, or is it a narrow, directed cone? If the latter, I wonder how the burst spreads/diffuses as it travels and what sort of equation governs the energy flux with respect to distance and initial conditions.

Great question! Since they're emanated in jets, the GRBs travel in a conical shape that spreads out as it travels. Check out page 19 of this paper, it has a histogram of the jet opening angle; http://arxiv.org/pdf/1101.2458.pdf

Then you can figure out the flux from the area of a circle on a sphere, which is something like 2πr^2(1−cosθ) Where theta is the opening angle and r is the distance from point of emanation of the GRB.

Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

#22
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Actually, filters that select on galaxy scale are unlikely to be the "great filter", because we don't seem to see any artificially generated signals coming from within our own galaxy. This particular filter does strike within our own galaxy though, just to a lesser degree. So maybe.

It seems like it might exclude a lot of the galaxy, the central part, from hosting long lived complex life.

This would mean that complex life is more common along the outer rim, where we are. This in turn means that the median distance between complex living biospheres might be very large, further reducing the likelihood of visitation or receiving signals.

Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

#23

Let'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?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Project

Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

#24
post #16
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I thought the Fermi Paradox (and hence the Great Filter) was about the absence of life originating in our own galaxy? I don't think anyone has suggested that any species is likely be able to cross intergalactic distances.

It is, but on a side note:

If you actually had the technology to accelerate to a speed close to light, time dilation might actually allow you to make an intergalactic journey as long as you were okay with leaving behind your home forever... Since a few years for you might be tens of millions of years elsewhere. There is also little matter between galaxies, so the hyper velocity particles problem would be less severe. Still total sci fi from where we are sitting, just saying that once you approach c distances shrink a lot (relative to your frame of reference). So if travel close to c is possible at all, travel almost anywhere is possible.

This is one of the reasons the Fermi paradox is so interesting. There are tons of possible explanations. One simple one in this context is, of course, that accelerating to speeds that close to light is just physically impossible for various reasons. This would at least limit migration to nearby interstellar distances at best, which when combined with other factors would make intelligences encountering one another statistically rare in the universe.

There was a sci fi book where a ship's Bussard Ramjet got stuck in the "on" position and they kept accelerating until time dilation allowed them to survive a great crunch and another Big Bang. By the time they stopped they were in a new universe.

Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

#25

> 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 f…

I am not an expert, but my understanding is that long GRBs are expected as the result of the collapse of very massive stars. These stars are short lived (few million years) and very luminous. Metals (in astrophysics anything heavier than Helium) in the envelope of such a massive star would drive strong radiation-pressure driven mass losses (because of the increased opacity). Only very metal poor stars are able to remain sufficiently compact and massive at the onset of collapse to be able to trigger a GRB.

Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

#26
post #2

Is this the Great Filter?

Probably not. Life will find a way!

> The bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans is the best known extremophile among the few organisms that can survive extremely high exposures to desiccation and ionizing radiation, which shatter its genome into hundreds of short DNA fragments2, 3, 4, 5. Remarkably, these fragments are readily reassembled into a functional 3.28-megabase genome. Here we describe the relevant two-stage DNA repair process... figure [1]

Direct radiation exposure is not the only threatening aspect of a GRB and even Deinococcus Radiodurans can't withstand the full onslaught of a nearby GRB [2], but I do believe that D.R. is a good enough proof of concept to argue that adaptation is not only feasible but probable. GRBs would set life back a few hundred million years (whether here or in a remote galaxy), but I doubt they would put an end to it.

[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7111/fig_tab/natu...

[2] http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/070226_grb-life.htm

Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

#27
post #24
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the Fermi Paradox (and hence the Great Filter) was about the absence of life originating in our own galaxy? I don't think anyone has suggested that any species is likely be able to cross intergalactic distances.

It is, but on a side note: If you actually had the technology to accelerate to a speed close to light, time dilation might actually allow you to make an intergalactic journey as long as you were okay with leaving behind your home forever... Since a few years for you might be tens of millions of years elsewhere. There is also little matter between galaxies, so the hyper velocity particles problem would be less severe.…

The issue with Fermi's Paradox is the fact that it's not a paradox at all. It relies on assumptions and presumptions that are now dated (we have explanations for).

For starters, let's begin with the first point it makes; If there are a bunch of civilizations out there, why haven't we heard them yet?

That's the wrong question. It makes an incorrect presumption; Why should we have heard them? Do you think a highly advanced civilization is going to be using something as archaic as "radio signals" to communicate across vast interstellar distances? Due to the inverse square law, it's incredibly inefficient, laughably so. It would be like trying to use smoke signals to communicate across oceans. A beam of light would be more efficient. But the beam would be instant and you could never "listen in" unless you were physically at the location of the target.

And who knows what else, maybe they communicate with gravitational waves, or something else we haven't discovered yet. Perhaps something with quantum entanglement (although that's unlikely). Yet, all of those cannot be detected unless you were specifically the target of the communication. They're not like radio waves where you can listen in. That's actually the very reason why they're so inefficient, they're broadcast omnidirectional and that takes a lot of power - wasted power.

And that's only one of the incorrect presumption Fermi's Paradox makes. There are more. I don't know why people keep bringing up the term when it's no longer applicable given what we know now. There is no paradox. There are plenty of great reasons why we haven't detected aliens yet, and none of them are paradoxical.

Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

#28
post #24
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the Fermi Paradox (and hence the Great Filter) was about the absence of life originating in our own galaxy? I don't think anyone has suggested that any species is likely be able to cross intergalactic distances.

It is, but on a side note: If you actually had the technology to accelerate to a speed close to light, time dilation might actually allow you to make an intergalactic journey as long as you were okay with leaving behind your home forever... Since a few years for you might be tens of millions of years elsewhere. There is also little matter between galaxies, so the hyper velocity particles problem would be less severe.…

You're thinking of Poul Anderson's "Tau Zero". It won a Hugo award in 1971. There are a few others that have worked the same concept, but none so famous or well-written.

Re: Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

#30
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, filters that select on galaxy scale are unlikely to be the "great filter", because we don't seem to see any artificially generated signals coming from within our own galaxy. This particular filter does strike within our own galaxy though, just to a lesser degree. So maybe.

It seems like it might exclude a lot of the galaxy, the central part, from hosting long lived complex life. This would mean that complex life is more common along the outer rim, where we are. This in turn means that the median distance between complex living biospheres might be very large, further reducing the likelihood of visitation or receiving signals.

There's a reasonably broad consensus that life isn't possible in the central part of the galaxy due to normal excessive radiation levels, even before considering extreme events.

Of course, galactic size being what it is, these two "central parts" could have boundaries differing by, oh, say, twenty thousand light years no problem.

I forget the details but I've seen arguments that too far away from the core is bad too.

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