Starship Asterisk*

Nitpicker wrote:For the sake of argument, if we imagine WR104 fires its jets at us directly, sometime in the next few years, say, and if we further imagine that it does so only within the precise window of a few hours around 22-23 December (when WR104 passes behind the Sun), would the Sun protect us? Either way, it might make for an extra special solstice festival that year.

Qrash wrote:
Won't the motion of our solar system around the center of the galaxy cause us to move out of the line of sight, even by a small amount in time until the supernova?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WR_104 wrote:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<WR 104 is a Wolf-Rayet star discovered in 1998, located 8,000 light years from Earth. It is a binary star with an OB companion. The stars have an orbital period of 220 days and the interaction between their stellar winds produce a spiral "pinwheel" outflow pattern over 200 astronomical units long.

Some optical measurements indicate that WR 104's rotational axis is aligned within 16° of Earth. This could have potential implications to the effects of WR 104's eventual hypernova, since these explosions often produce jets from their rotational poles. It is possible that WR 104 may even produce a gamma-ray burst, though it is not possible to predict with certainty at this time. Newer spectroscopic data suggest that WR 104's rotational axis is more likely angled 30–40° from Earth.>>

Beyond wrote:
104, WR 104.

Nitpicker wrote:
For the sake of argument, if we imagine WR104 fires its jets at us directly, sometime in the next few years, say, and if we further imagine that it does so only within the precise window of a few hours around 22-23 December (when WR104 passes behind the Sun), would the Sun protect us?

• Ten hours of safety each year...just great
  
  You weren't thinkin' of Haydn were you

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/104_%28number%29 wrote:
104 is the number of guns on Admiral Horatio Nelson's flagship HMS Victory.

104 is the number of Symphonies written by Joseph Haydn upon which numbers are agreed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst wrote:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<The greatest danger [from gamma-ray bursts in the future] is believed to come from Wolf–Rayet stars, regarded by astronomers as likely GRB candidates. When such stars transition to supernovae, they may emit intense beams of gamma rays, and if Earth were to lie in the beam zone, devastating effects may occur. Gamma rays would not penetrate Earth's atmosphere to impact the surface directly, but they would chemically damage the stratosphere. For example, if WR 104, at a distance of 8,000 light-years were to hit Earth with a burst of 10 seconds duration, its gamma rays could deplete about 25 percent of the world's ozone layer. This would result in mass extinction, food chain depletion, and starvation. The side of Earth facing the GRB would receive potentially lethal radiation exposure, which can cause radiation sickness in the short term, and in the long term result in serious impacts to life due to ozone layer depletion.>>

Qev wrote:The Sun would be entirely opaque to a GRB, so yeah, we'd be fine under those circumstances. Now, if we were much, much further from the Sun, it would act as a gravitational lens and make the GRB's effects significantly worse.

neufer wrote:

Beyond wrote:
104, WR 104.

How about a little punctuation equilibrium.

JuanAustin wrote:forgive my ignorance, but if it's 8000 light years away and it went off, wouldn't it take 8000 years to reach us? if it went off 7,999 years and 364 days ago, we could get it tomorrow, right? would we feel the effects much sooner than any light based images we are looking at now or the other way around??

JuanAustin wrote:
forgive my ignorance, but if it's 8000 light years away and it went off, wouldn't it take 8000 years to reach us? if it went off 7,999 years and 364 days ago, we could get it tomorrow, right? would we feel the effects much sooner than any light based images we are looking at now or the other way around??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._94_%28Haydn%29 wrote:
<<Haydn's music contains many jokes, and the Surprise Symphony includes probably the most famous of all: a sudden fortissimo chord at the end of the otherwise piano opening theme in the variation-form second movement. The music then returns to its original quiet dynamic, as if nothing had happened, and the ensuing variations do not repeat the joke. (In German it is commonly referred to as the Symphony "mit dem Paukenschlag"—"with the kettledrum stroke"). In Haydn's old age, his biographer George August Griesinger, asked him whether he wrote this "surprise" to awaken the audience. Haydn replied:

• No, but I was interested in surprising the public with something new, and in making a brilliant debut, so that my student Pleyel, who was at that time engaged by an orchestra in London (in 1792) and whose concerts had opened a week before mine, should not outdo me. The first Allegro of my symphony had already met with countless Bravos, but the enthusiasm reached its highest peak at the Andante with the Drum Stroke. Encore! Encore! sounded in every throat, and Pleyel himself complimented me on my idea.>>

Chris Peterson wrote:

Qev wrote:The Sun would be entirely opaque to a GRB, so yeah, we'd be fine under those circumstances. Now, if we were much, much further from the Sun, it would act as a gravitational lens and make the GRB's effects significantly worse.

No, I don't think the Sun's gravitational field could change the nature of the GRB's effects on Earth, not at any distance. All it could do is very, very slightly change the apparent direction of the source.

Case wrote:
How focused would the beam be?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst wrote:
<<The approximate angular width of the jet (that is, the degree of spread of the beam) can be estimated directly by observing the achromatic "jet breaks" in afterglow light curves: a time after which the slowly decaying afterglow begins to fade rapidly as the jet slows and can no longer beam its radiation as effectively. Observations suggest significant variation in the jet angle from between 2 and 20 degrees.>>

Qev wrote:
Haven't there been proposals to use the Sun's gravitational field as a giant telescope lens? Not that a habitable planet could ever be that distant, since I think the focal point is out at >500 AU or something like that...