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Site-Staff t1_je8b6rp wrote

I mean… what are the ramifications for life with that exposure level?

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oicura_geologist t1_je8f819 wrote

"in human history"???? Um... Not happy with that. Best to say brightest recorded gamma-ray burst" vs. just being the brightest in all of human history.

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AutoBot82 t1_je8ha32 wrote

How can we say that? We only have had the means of detecting this for less than a century.....

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Understands-Irony t1_je8kn38 wrote

The article says that it’s based on the odds of black hole emitting GRBs directly at Earth like this one did. So the statement isn’t based on the fact that we haven’t recorded one before, but on the astronomical estimate that it will occur only once every 10,000 years

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Riegel_Haribo t1_je8o5mg wrote

This story, again from another news source, shows us the preposterous "news cycle". That brings us "super moon" "harvest moon" "blood moon" or other invented moons, alarmist solar storms that happen a dozen a year, or the "planetary alignment" with an exact date my mom even asked about - which is one planet setting on the horizon, and then you turn around and look to the other horizon to see another.

That a prepublish about a presentation at the American Astronomical Society Meeting this week, concerning something that happened six months ago, can be written about once and hit news outlets all over to be regurgitated again and again.

A not-terrible link: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-missions-study-what-may-be-a-1-in-10000-year-gamma-ray-burst

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ssbn622 t1_je8tpm7 wrote

Hmm that explains the greenish tan i had though the holidays.

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dwdrummond t1_je8tumk wrote

My ass still hurts, but I feel was always destined to take one for humanity

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itsRobbie_ t1_je8xlva wrote

A Dyson sphere from an advanced civilization missed its target

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Additional_Ad_2778 t1_je905rh wrote

The big mystery here is why these gamma rays were so slow, apparently only travelling 'near the speed of light'?

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trollsmurf t1_je90760 wrote

Is that why I can't smell anything and my limbs fall off?

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jerry111165 t1_je94pn5 wrote

No wonder I’m feeling some super powers coming on

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fleranon t1_je974ez wrote

Huh. I always thought Gamma Rays were the most deadly thing in the universe and would basically sterilize exactly half of the planet if one were to hit earth. Seems I was very wrong

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hundenkattenglassen t1_je9bljq wrote

Pretty fukin amazing that a few thousands light years is considered to be a dangerous area within GRB range.

Meanwhile on Earth and large explosions, meh go 10 km away and you’re perfectly safe from any man made non-nuclear explosions.

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weizXR t1_je9c11c wrote

*Human history, since we've been ~accurately recording (so, not that long).

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bojun t1_je9d59i wrote

Not in human history as we only recently learned how to detect them

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Secret-Head-6267 t1_je9hs5x wrote

Or, all of the scientific journals were wrong. Bc everything that I have ever read on the subject of GRBs has been quite clear on the outcome of a direct hit, irrespective of any inverse square law involving wave propagation and x distance traversed in a near vacuum: total annihilation. Perhaps the Perimeter Institute and Neil Turok have some final words on this phenomenon? -J

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KorgX3 t1_je9l61h wrote

Educating kids about the realities of shark attacks left an alarmist void that something had to fill. It will be even more fun when quantum sciences become more prevalent and new discoveries lead to headlines like "Quantum Computing Spells Doom For Humanity" when some kid in Italy figures out how to play Doom on a quantum computer.

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Funktapus t1_je9m7bf wrote

And that’s when AI technology started picking up steam. Coincidence?

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fleranon t1_je9rlel wrote

Same! I think I even read something once that linked Gamma Rays to Fermi's great Filter. Instant death by massive Space Ray, Zzzzzap. Perhaps Science Mags tend to be overly sensationalistic sometimes :)

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oicura_geologist t1_je9x1pi wrote

Considering humans (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) evolved between 90,000 and 160,000 years ago, that would, on average, allow for up to 16 possible occurrences. I would still have to stand by my statement. Secondly, a 500 year flood does not simply happen once every 500 years, it is a statistical average, and I have seen records of 3 consecutive 500 year floods within one year. Statistics is, over the long term, useful, but useless to the individual.

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Equivalent_Ad_8413 t1_je9ybhu wrote

"Human history"? Do they really have good records going back a couple hundred thousand years?

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jdragun2 t1_je9z1eg wrote

They have to be basically pointed directly at us to be a threat. The chances of one being in the correct range and be directly lined up with our solar system [I'm pretty sure they would be large enough to encompass most of the inner solar system in a beam] is outlandishly small. A few seconds difference and a beam would miss completely at those distances thanks to how fast everything is moving relative to one another at that scale. The fact that this one hit from the distances it did is mind boggling. I also wonder about how much diffusion of the beam there is over those distances, which if it did, would it increase the chances of getting hit or decrease it? Any astrophysics people who would like to chime in here I would appreciate it!

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ApplicationRoyal1072 t1_je9z7ul wrote

Considering the fact that homo sapien and sub species history is about 1.5 or so million generations and recorded history is only about 20 thousand generations it's just a blink in time of a lifetime of each of us. There are physical phenomena that we deduce from our surroundings though. As we reach further into the past to collect data about facts with technological advances .........we still won't approach a meaningful understanding of our universe. Unless of course we somehow evolve . But then there won't be humans anymore. I think in the end all of this can't be fully resolved.

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potatomafia69 t1_je9zote wrote

More specifically under 150 lightyears. Cancer rates will skyrocket, ozone layer will be depleted and it could even trigger an ice age. Under 25 lightyears is just a death sentence. It'll cause mass extinction of almost all life forms on Earth. Luckily there's not one star that will go supernova anytime soon within this radius and there's not much to worry about.

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kayl_breinhar t1_jea0ru0 wrote

Honestly, if radiation from a GRB close enough to hurt us hit you, the first thing you'd notice would be intense nausea and/or unexplainable blindness.

And with a prolonged full body dose of radiation that would probably make the Chernobyl Elephant's Foot look like a Rabbit's Foot, your central nervous and immune systems would be overwhelmed by a complete bodily failure and you'd just pass out and never wake up.

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kayl_breinhar t1_jea12yv wrote

We can surmise that Earth has been meaningfully hit with GRBs over its history (even before ours) by taking ice and core samples and finding decaying isotopes that shouldn't be there.

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bluesam3 t1_jeab7wk wrote

Not an astophysicist, but I can give a lower bound: the lower limit limit on beam divergence angle is (wavelength) / (𝜋 × (initial diameter)). Wikipedia suggests a source diameter of ~60,000 km, and the peak photon energy for the event was 18 TeV, which translates to a wavelength of about 7×10^(-20)m, putting the lower limit on divergence (for a perfect laser) at 7×10^(-20)/(𝜋 × 60000000) = 372 nanoradians, which gives a final radius at that range of 60000km + 2 × sin(372 nanoradians) × (2.4 billion light years), which works out to somewhere in the region of 1,800 light years. This beam was presumably a very long way away from being a perfect laser, and most of the particles will have had lower energies, so that's probably an order of magnitude or several too low. However you slice it, though, that's a pretty wide end target, so it's probably more accurate to say it hit our vague region of the galaxy, rather than that it hit Earth. Certainly it wasn't at risk of hitting the wrong bit of the solar system.

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bluesam3 t1_jeabd9a wrote

"Human history" generally means "the time in which humans have been recording history" (often implicitly "in a way that has survived to the modern day"), not "the time in which humans have existed".

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bluesam3 t1_jeabku5 wrote

It's a question of range. If one went off 24 light years away, that would be true (except that the back side of the planet wouldn't have a good day either). This one was literally a billion times further away.

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nichogenius t1_jeadg48 wrote

The first GRB was only detected in 1967. Assuming we have documented every GRB since (we certainly haven't), that means our observational history only covers 0.5% of that 10,000 year expected frequency of occurence.

Assuming our models are accurate, the odds we were just lucky to see this one in our limited observational history are roughly 0.5%. The odds that our models are underestimating the frequency of these events is quite a bit higher.

Time will tell.

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Bensemus t1_jeakp4w wrote

They are a possibility but there's never been confusion about how deadly they are. The farther away you are from something the less energy it will have when it gets to you.

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ozhs3 t1_jealjp7 wrote

"Struck the solar system." This title is misleading. It did not hit our planet at all.

Edit: some misinformation i was presenting, deleted.

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MegamanD t1_jeamm69 wrote

Is that why my pug starting firing eye laser beams?

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PhoenixReborn t1_jebdrbd wrote

The term "harvest moon" dates back at least to the 18th century with other cultures celebrating or noting the autumn full moon long before. Blood moon can either mean a harvest moon or a lunar eclipse. Not really fair to blame the news. I'll give you super moon.

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patches3141 t1_jed2jgz wrote

"A few thousand lightyears" also means a few hundred quintillion miles. There are more miles in that distance than combinations on a rubiks cube. And that thing can still hurt us. Space is scary

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oicura_geologist t1_jef1r1o wrote

Not being an anthropologist myself, I can't say what the field considers. I am a geologist and note that history is not just that which is recorded in anthropomorphic records. Otherwise, history is only the last 5k years, and everything else was just mystical fun to note.

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bluesam3 t1_jef763l wrote

Yes, "history" only generally refers to that period. I don't know where you got the idea that knowledge of the past is divided into "history" and "mystical fun to note" - that's just outright nonsense. Indeed, everything prior to written records is generally called "pre-history".

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oicura_geologist t1_jefqqm4 wrote

Geology is a historic science. Perspective, to a geologist; pre-history is anything that happens prior to creation of the planet 4500 Ma. To a Cosmologist, pre-history is prior to the inflationary period 1x10^-32 sec post big bang. The article itself quotes "Scientists say the gamma-ray burst (GRB), the most powerful type of explosion in the universe, was 70 times brighter than any previously recorded event. So the title of THIS reddit forum claims "The brightest gamma-ray in human history hit our planet this past Fall" is not precise enough. Especially if one considers that Gamma radiation was not detected until 1903 by humans, and thus, the title is patently wrong considering the perspective of the historical argument.

Your opinion that "History" is only what is written, is a fallacy as many sciences see "history" in very different ways.

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