Planetary securityNo need to worry about getting fried by gamma ray burst
If recent news that University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) researchers observed the largest gamma ray burst ever has you nervous about getting blasted into extinction by a massive burst from space, the UAH researchers have good news. The chances of Earth being fried by a burst are exceedingly rare.
A burst of gamma radiation from a collapsing star // Source: ttufo.com
If recent news that University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) researchers observed the largest gamma ray burst ever has you nervous about getting blasted into extinction by a massive burst from space, the UAH researchers have good news.
The chances of Earth being fried by a burst are exceedingly rare. In fact, say Dr. Rob Preece, doctoral candidate J. Michael Burgess, and Dr. Michael S. Briggs, Earth was actually at the center of the hit from April’s big gamma ray burst, which they picked up on equipment aboard the Fermi Space Telescope that UAH and partners NASA/MSFC and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany designed and tested.
A UAH release reports that the Earth took a direct hit, but the collapsing star that created the burst was so far away that it was very weak when it reached Earth. Stars that collapse and produce these bursts are far away, the researchers say, in portions of the universe that were created early after the Big Bang event, portions where there are a lot of lighter elements that were flung far. Closer to Earth, there are a lot of heavier elements that suppress the collapse of stars.
“Our observations show that gamma ray bursts are less common in the immediate universe,” said Dr. Briggs.
“These bursts occur in younger galaxies,” said Burgess. “We’re in the oldest galaxy in our immediate universe because as you look deeper into space you are looking back into time.”
So any burst generated out there will come from really far away where we can detect it early, and it will be a comparative pipsqueak by the time it gets here.
“As I was thinking about it, I realized that we would have ample warning,” Dr. Preece said. The stars involved are huge. “They blow off winds that we can see well in advance. We would know ahead of time if one of these guys was ready to go off.”
The gamma ray burst created in these events is much more like a rifle than a shotgun. Unless you are close by and directly in the path, you are good. In fact, researchers are watching a star that is closer to Earth called Eta Carinae that is what they call a hyper-giant, ready potentially to collapse and release a gamma ray burst.
