Was that the Christmas star you saw…I don’t think so.
“Astronomically speaking, this explosion happened in our back yard. If it were in our living room, we’d be in big trouble. Had this happened within ten light years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and triggered a mass extinction.” The nearest known magnetar to Earth, 1E 2259+586, is about 13,000 light years away. "
Starquake that left Earth 49,990 light years from disaster
And it only happened 49,990 years ago. Seems like yesterday.
Astronomically speaking, this explosion happened in our back yard. If it were in our living room, we’d be in big trouble. Had this happened within ten light years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and triggered a mass extinction.”
So if it happened in our living room it only would have been big trouble but within 10 light years mass extinction? Isn’t our living room within 10 light years? The sentence is meaningless.
Not really. Astronomically speaking, the herbacious border down by the back gate at the bottom of the garden is the equivalent of 50,000 light years away. It’s a long garden.
Inside your living, by the french doors overlooking the deck and the silently rusting BBQ, is the equivalent of 10 light years, astronomically speaking. And if the bang happened there, then yup, big trouble, the radiation could have destroyed the atmosphere and eliminated life.
See, the “big trouble” in the second sentence is being qualified and described in the third. But don’t forget the bloke’s an astronomer, and if you’ve ever seen Sir Patrick Moore as so many of us have on the telly in the UK, you’d know they have trouble communicating with us ordinary folks.
Even though the distance is vast beyond real comprehension, so was the sheer amount of power involved, and the difference between the two was not that great, it if had been just barely more powerful…
Folks, something that happened 50,000 years and so far away still lit up our atmosphere by the time its evidence made its way to us. Think about that.
It’s the astronomical equivalent of changing your tire by the highway, hearing a big noise, and looking up to see a semi roaring past just inches from your face.
What really fascinates me about this stuff is the distance involved. We don’t see the explosion, but an image of the explosion that’s 49,990 years old. The long term ramifications (in 1000’s of years) of the explosion aren’t apparent and won’t be for a long time.
But the same holds true for anything you look at. For example if you look at an event (a jogger) at 500 yards you are seeing something that happened 0.0000015 seconds ago. You are seeing into the past!
What if you watch two joggers. One is 100 yards away and the other is 1000 yards away. They both appear to cross a finish line at the same time. Yet the farthest jogger actually crossed first because you saw an image that occured 3.05474xE-6 seconds ago while the nearer image crossed 3.05474xE-7 seconds ago.
Assume you could build a telescope. the Amazing Televiewer that would let you magnify any image and see any level of detail you want.
If you took the Amazing Televiewer and focused on an object 1000 light years away, you’d be seeing details from 1000 years ago.
So assume you can also blink to anywhere in the universe you desire, instantly using the Harry Harrison transfer screen. You could blink yourself 1000 light years from earth and actually watch events that occured 1000 years before.
Don’t forget to build an Angel Light too while you’re at it, Amar’s wanted one ever since the Basel Ladies Volleyball Team moved in over the road from him.
Gary, we had a deal, i thought i could trust you, you said you wouldn’t tell anyone!!!
But this thing about vision is really totally amazing, i’ve thought about it often, we never see the present, whatever we see, we are always looking into the past, the closer the things are to our retina, the closer they are in the present, amazing. Even if lightspeed were infinately high, it still would be in the past, because there still would be a delay due to our brain needing to process the information. Ha. We see no present.
Never thought of it quite like that before. Going to have fun talking with the hubby tonight about that… he loves stuff like this. Thanks for the new perspective!
Sara (who wonders if the “Harry Harrison transfer screen” will ever be available at the local science superstore)
The Harry Harrison transfer screen comes from a series of short stories by Harry Harrison on the development of a screen that will blink someone from one place to another as long as there’s a screen at both ends. Good stuff.
Let’s take a look at the scale between where the event happened (50,000 light years away), and where it would have happened, and caused mass extinction on Earth (Mars too if you’re on the inside at NASA) using the MWRLRSL scale (Mid-West Rancher Living Room in St. Louis). If the standard living room is 15 ft in length (4.572m for those of you in the East ), here’s the comparison:
If you had been standing half of the room away (7.5ft/2.286m) from the hypothetical killer blast (10 light years), then the actual blast occured 37500ft/7.1 miles/11.36km (50k light years) from your living room, somewhere in East St. Louis, Illinois (having driven through that area, its not so hypothetical ) If the killer blast was dynamite, the hypothetically close event would ruin your afternoon, but the actual event would be similar to construction blasting at a distance. You can hear it, but it dosen’t rattle the windows, or even knock the edge off of the freshly poured Guinness…
That’s pretty cool. I hadn’t heard about that yet. I find this sentence in the report hilarious:
A magnetar has a surface crust of iron nuclei one kilometre thick, stressed by unbearable forces from its magnetic field. From time to time the crust deforms violently under these forces.
There are now 1000’s of people walking around believing that we know exactly what a magnetar is and exactly how it looks - and even how it formed. It’s funny how quickly hypothesis finds it’s way into conscious reality these days.
Sara (who wonders if the “Harry Harrison transfer screen” will ever be available at the local science superstore)
), here’s the comparison:
) If the killer blast was dynamite, the hypothetically close event would ruin your afternoon, but the actual event would be similar to construction blasting at a distance. You can hear it, but it dosen’t rattle the windows, or even knock the edge off of the freshly poured Guinness… 