Star explodes halfway across universe (CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye.

The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday.

The gamma rays were detected by NASA's Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m. "We'd never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA's Neil Gehrels said.

It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.

However, NASA has no reports that any skywatchers spotted the burst, which lasted less than an hour.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/03/21/exploding.star.ap/index.html

If there was any life in that galaxy ... I suspect it's gone now. This is just stupefying in its scale.

[SteppingRazor]

1. Or, more accurately, it was gone 7 billion years ago. n/t

[Clear Blue Sky]

5. Good point.

[lapfog_1]

2. That's one of those things that we simply have to hope

doesn't happen in our galaxy... even a small one. Even the cockroaches won't survive...

[Occulus]

6. That was actually the premise in one of Stephen Baxter's novels

for why nobody in the galaxy had ever lived long enough and gotten smart enough to travel faster than light, develop a controlled wormhole, etc.

Gamma ray bursters regularly set everything back to the level of pond scum or even lower life.

If it ever happens, there is nothing we could do, even if we could get off this rock. The only thing that can possibly be 'done' is to either get away or eliminate the threat. That last would involve steering stars around in the sky. Not something I believe we will ever be able to accomplish...

[lapfog_1]

7. Probably easier to come up with a planet sized

gamma ray shield. And no, I have no idea how to do that either. Not now.

[Nihil]

12. For some reason ...

> Gamma ray bursters regularly set everything back to the level of
> pond scum or even lower life.

... this reminds me of an automatic water-feature cleaning system
that periodically kills off all of the algae, larvae & other
"invasive" life-forms that thrive in anything with water, sunlight
and leached nutrients, thus enabling the water-feature to remain
"pretty" for the owner to view ... sterile but "pretty" ...

:yoiks:

[Duncan]

13. Diaspora by Greg Egan

Is based on trying to evade collapsing stars. I highly recommend Egan to all Hard sci-fi buffs.

[Hugabear]

3. From what I understand about gamma ray bursts...

The bursts erupt like twin geysers out of a star's poles, shooting off in opposite directions. The bursts are fairly concentrated, which is what makes them so strong and powerful.

I don't know if they would necessarily destroy all life in its galaxy, but I sure wouldn't want to be in the path of one of those bursts. Even a gamma ray burst in a nearby galaxy, if aimed directly at us, would make life miserable for us.

[Warpy]

4. Gone before there was enough dust and rock

to start to coalesce into our own system.

I just wish they'd shown before, during and after pictures.

[TechBear_Seattle]

8. Very likely, no life (such as we would recognize) was destroyed

Life as we know it requires "metals," which in astronomy means elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. The only source for metals is the fusion of primal hydrogen in the hearts and eventual violent death of massive "first generation" stars. Only in this way can carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, iron, etc. be created and distributed through space. Our sun is a "second generation" star, formed when the ashes of now dead stars coalesced; we know this by the simple fact that our solar system contains carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, iron and so forth.

If the star went supernova more than seven billion years ago, it almost certainly was a first generation star. It would not have had planets, and very likely there were no planets within millions of light years. However, I expect that its death would have spread metals around a very large volume of space, and the shock bow of the supernova compressed those metals and lots of primaly hydrogen into new star systems, systems with planets and very likely life.

Ex mortis, vita inter astra

[FiveGoodMen]

9. Why would a first generation star not have had planets?

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. I should have said "no terrestrial planets"

You can't have a rocky world without rocks, after all.

[FiveGoodMen]

11. That's a good point.