"There goes the stellar neighborhood" Topic

link

Suppose you lived on a planet…100 light years away, and this is a predictable event.
Put on your best Space Opera helmet, and try to figure out a way to:
1) Prevent this from happening
2) Not get fried

I misread that to 'fired', as in the bearer of bad news. Probably the most likely event.

'I have conclusive proof we are all going to die.'
'We can't tell people that, they will panick and there is nothing worse than having people panick. Why we never tell the public the truth if it might cause a 'panic', or reduce their respect/awe/fear of us. Now put on your nice white coat and go out there and tell them that the concensus of consenting scientists is that some simple sunblock will be sufficient.'
'I can't do that!'
'Well, then you are fired. And since we fired you, anything you say will be from a *disgruntled former employee* and did we mention we have surveillance video of you and your lab assistant making hot monkey love in the laboratory?

Our astronomy professor told us that if Betljuse (sp?) ever went supernova, it would boil the seas of Earth.

1.) Not possible without a level of technology that would make it unnecessary to prevent, as you would just shield the planet and ignore it.

2.) As Han Solo said, "Well, that's the real trick, isn't it?"

There are three ways to handle this: Deflect the gamma ray burst, block the gamma ray burst, or diffuse the gamma ray burst.

If you know this is coming, presumably you have some or all of the 100 years for the burst to arrive in your system. Deflecting could be done with gravity, but that implies a very high level of tech… still, if you could create a sufficient gravity well in the path of the burst, it could alter the path of the burst, and the closer you get to the source of the burst, the greater the alteration you could produce with lesser gravity. What amount of gravity? Probably too much to produce at our tech level.

Blocking becomes a bit simpler (or rather diffusing, as it's not possible to block all gamma rays). Gamma rays can be effectively blocked by any reasonably dense material (say, lead or gold). The denser the material, the better. Of course, even less dense material can be used, if the shield is made thicker. So you could use water, if you used enough of it.

How to apply this:
Since the event is predictable, and we have a century before it reaches our inhabited planet (presumably Earth), we've got lots of time to build a shield, and should be able to predict exactly when, where, and from which direction the burst will enter the Solar System. As gamma rays travel in straight lines, we don't have to shield the entire system, just Earth. So we need to build a shield dense enough to block the rays, and roughly Earth's diameter in width. Well, looky there— we've got ice comets, asteroids, Jupiter's moons… raw material, we've got. Nor does the shield have to be one cohesive object. It could be an array of independent objects, in a "layered cloud" if you will, orbiting the Sun or at least on a vector that will cause it to intercept the gamma burst at the proper moment (depending on the known duration of the burst). Perhaps even an artificial nebula of pulverized asteroids, icy comets, and parts of an ice moon (sorry, Europa) would be effective.

Now, at current tech levels, to pull this off we'd need to dump the Outer Space Treaty (or whatever it's called) and tell the anti-nuke weenies to shut up, and launch a fleet of Orion-class nuclear pulse vessels to give us the range and power to start moving stuff into position. But I think it could be done.

I don't think you'll be able to prevent it.
So, the next option is to not be fried.
You'll need a getaway rocket.
But, you'll also need a place to getaway to.

That should be the priority of NASA.
Find us another planet to run to if this one gets melted.
Chop, chop. Times-a-wastin!

Take the bathyscaphe to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench and sit it out.

You know all those lead figures – you have just found a use for them!

since the power that kills us all from an event like this will be hitting us at the speed of light there is no way to know its coming till it hits us. So there is no way to run and no way of knowing its going to hit.

since the power that kills us all from an event like this will be hitting us at the speed of light there is no way to know its coming till it hits us. So there is no way to run and no way of knowing its going to hit.

Not entirely true. We already know what types of stars do this, and it's possible that as such stars build to a gamma ray burst that other detectable changes in the star's radiation, light, etc. might occur. Therefore, if we know the sequence, we might be able to detect if or when a star has begun a similar sequence, and make a reasonable projection as to when that sequence will result in a gamma ray burst. These events are not instantaneous— they take a considerable time to develop within the star. The question is only whether such developments begin to create noticeable changes in the star's radiation and whether we can see that, and how soon afterward the burst occurs. Thus, though we could not detect the burst itself until it arrived, we could indeed have a "warning" that it was coming, and act accordingly.

What I find fascinating in a gruesome way is whether or not such events destroy without a trace left large civilizations or even eco-systems of non-intelligent animals. It boggles my mind to think that something like the beauty and savagery of life on a specific planet or some other body can flourish and then be snuffed out. We see the remains of such prehistoric animals and of extinction events here on earth along with evidence or tales of past civilizations that have risen and fallen, sometimes without trace. To wipe out all knowledge of that with no possibility of it ever having existed is just overwhelming. And all the more so if you think of how often it just have already occurred.

Although a Christian, I sometimes wonder about a god that would do this sort of thing.
--
Tim

Whats the problem, gammaray burst hits us and everyone gets superpowers!!!

On a more serious note, the gammaray would probebly not kill us on the ground, atleast not from any of those stars we know about, but it would kill much of the atmosphere, so what if you could strenghthen the magnetic field around earth,

Parzival we can't even track the big county killer rocks that just miss us in this system longer out then a weeks warning, most of the time. Even if we get a years heads up there is nothing in stock that can stop it or even in planning.

Parzival we can't even track the big county killer rocks

Actually, it's not that we can't, it's that we don't. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. It's not a factor of physics or technology— it's a matter of political will.

But even so, the comparison isn't valid. Space rocks are relatively small, don't emit light or radiation, and aren't immense, relatively "stationary" balls of flaming gas that can be seen from distances of billions of light years. We know where the stars are, we can tell from their place on the spectrum what type of stars they are, we can calculate how far away and how old they are, and we can determine, even at this stage, where a star might be in its life cycle. Granted, are we looking at every single star? No— but we are looking at every star in our stellar neighborhood, and thus every star that in fact could produce a gamma ray burst which might actually endanger us. If we can more precisely determine the status of these stars, we might well be able to predict a burst before it happens.

So there's nothing in physics or even technological capability that would prevent us from at least detecting a dangerous star… assuming that the cycle changes that lead up to a burst are indeed signaled by detectable changes in the star's radiation and at a rate that would precede the burst by a significant number of years. Not being a stellar astrophysicist, I don't know the answer to that element.

By the way, in all probability my proposed "shield" need only be in place for a limited period of time, as gamma ray bursts typically only last for a few seconds. At least one has been recorded of greater than two months, but how long the Earth would actually be in such a beam might vary, as the Earth and the Solar System itself are all moving.

Note that it would be possible to shield ourselves and some animals from the immediate effects of a burst simply by entering underground shelters or deep bodies of water. That would also only need to be an action taken for whatever hemisphere is facing the burst at the time it occurs. The Earth itself will protect the remainder of the planet's surface.

However, the burst, if long enough, could produce lasting effects by destroying a significant percentage of the Earth's ozone layer, or even causing chemical reactions in the atmosphere that might result in a natural "smog cloud," which could block the Sun's rays and produce a drastic cooling effect— a "chemical winter", if you will. I think that's an iffy prospect, but the ozone loss would be devastating, and likely produce mass extinctions. While theoretically we could protect ourselves with clothing and shelters from the excess radiation getting through, our food supply would be drastically impacted, and third world nations would probably see mass deaths. I'm not certain what the overall effect on plant life would be, but I doubt it would be good.

If we are at that advanced a level, we would have stickpiles of the "right" chemical to blast into the atmosphere to get it back to "normal".
Not enough Yterbium Hexahydride? Surely we will be advanced enough to synthesize it!

Well, my proposal isn't all that "advanced" on the shield. Just pulverize the rock and water in a few asteroids and spread it in a cloud between the Earth and the gamma ray burster. That's not outside of something we could potentially do now, much less in a hundred years.

As for ozone, we do know how to make it— run electricity through ordinary oxygen; poof, you get ozone. Could we create ozone generators to produce upper atmospheric ozone? I dunno. Maybe put another water cloud between us and the Sun while we build up the ozone layer again. When we're done, start orbiting rocks near the cloud as "mass attractors" to recollect the water, then use the water for all our space colonies.