{"id":3746,"date":"2012-08-02T22:04:10","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T12:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/?p=3746"},"modified":"2012-08-14T14:23:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T04:23:59","slug":"eta-carinae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/2012\/08\/eta-carinae-3746.html","title":{"rendered":"Could Eta Carinae Harm Us?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just been reading <em>Parallel Worlds<\/em> by Michio Kaku. He is very skilled at making complex topics easy to follow. And that helps me to generate ideas rather than just trying to keep up. This is from page 126:<\/p>\n<p><em>Gamma Ray Bursters&#8230; releasing within seconds the entire energy output of our Sun over its entire life history (about 10 billion years).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>That amount of energy is hard to imagine. The current thinking is that a GRB is the result of a hypernova &#8211; a super supernova. And all the energy would be released in two narrow directions which are known as a jets. The closest potential hypernova that we know of is Eta Carinae.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/2012\/08\/eta-carinae-3746.html\/eta_carinae\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3747\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3747\" title=\"Eta_Carinae\" src=\"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Eta_Carinae.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"251\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eta_Carinae\">Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is possible that the Eta Carinae hypernova or supernova, when it occurs, could affect Earth, about 7,500 light years away. It is unlikely, however, to affect terrestrial lifeforms directly, as they will be protected from gamma rays by the atmosphere, and from some other cosmic rays by the magnetosphere. <strong>The damage would likely be restricted to the upper atmosphere, the ozone layer, spacecraft, including satellites, and any astronauts in space, although a certain few claim that radiation damage to the upper atmosphere would have catastrophic effects as well.<\/strong> At least one scientist has claimed that when the star explodes, &#8220;it would be so bright that you would see it during the day, and you could even read a book by its light at night&#8221;. A supernova or hypernova produced by Eta Carinae would probably eject a gamma ray burst (GRB) out on both polar areas of its rotational axis. Calculations show that the deposited energy of such a GRB striking the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere would be equivalent to one kiloton of TNT per square kilometer over the entire hemisphere facing the star <strong>with ionizing radiation depositing ten times the lethal whole body dose to the surface.<\/strong> This catastrophic burst would probably not hit Earth, though, because the rotation axis does not currently point towards our solar system. If Eta Carinae is a binary system, this may affect the future intensity and orientation of the supernova explosion that it produces, depending on the circumstances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, it is possible that the jets could point towards us, and 10 billion years worth of sun energy would head our way. And it is possible that it could happen this year. And it could harm us. Unless you are underground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just been reading Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku. He is very skilled at making complex topics easy to follow. And that helps me to generate ideas rather than just trying to keep up. This is from page 126:<br \/>\nGamma Ray Bursters&#8230; releasing within seconds the entire energy output of our Sun over its entire life history (about 10 billion years).<br \/>\nThat amount of energy is hard to imagine. The current thinking is that a GRB is the result of a hypernova &#8211; a super supernova. And all the energy would be released in two narrow directions which are known as a jets. The closest potential hypernova that we know of is Eta Carinae.<\/p>\n<p>This from Wikipedia:<br \/>\nIt is possible that the Eta Carinae hypernova or supernova, when it occurs, could affect Earth, about 7,500 light years away. It is unlikely, however, to affect terrestrial lifeforms directly, as they will be protected from gamma &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,31,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gamma-ray","category-space-nasties","category-supernova"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3746"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3854,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions\/3854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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