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how's this for doomsday
buschmaster
Member Posts: 14,229 ✭✭✭
Five million years ago, when humanity's ancestors were just learning to walk upright, a star was ejected from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, at a staggering 3.7 million mph. This month, a group of researchers spotted the superfast star traveling relatively close to Earth.
https://www.msn.com/g00/en-us/news/us/supermassive-black-hole-ejects-star-from-milky-way-galaxy/ar-BBWMlYO?i10c.ua=1&i10c.encReferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&i10c.dv=15
according to its trajectory, it should pass within 29,000 light-years form Earth. that's a comfortable distance but imagine if that was a near miss like the asteroid a few months ago. ho ho ho. we would get obliverated and there's nothing we could do about it. how are you going to blast a star apart with anti-asteroid nukes? forget it. bug on a windshield. it wouldn't even slow down.
even a near miss would have gotten us fried. here's how it works. if the Moon would fall to Earth, yeah it would hit the ground at thousands of miles per hour, but since it's so big, it would still take 7 minutes to collide. do the math. so much velocity, times so much width, equals 7 minutes of smashing from one end to the other. so if a star flew past the earth, yeah it would fly past at millions of miles per hour, but since it's so big that would result in a few minutes of being right next to something as hot as the sun. we would get fried like a giant chicken on a cosmic rotisserie and not live to regret it.
anyways, from its trajectory, they figure it came from the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy and used to be a binary star (two stars revolving around each other) while the other one got ate by the supermassive black hole that resides there, this one got shot away like Captain Kirk doing a slingshot maneuver around the sun to accelerate velocity. that 3,700,000 mph will eventually carry it out into the void of interstellar space where it will fizzle out in a few billion years, all by itself.
Comments
the star is called S5-HVS1. we can't directly measure its diameter but Wikipedia says that through spectral analysis it is classified as an "A-type main-sequence star" which would have a mass of 1.4 to 2.1 times that of our own sun. so it would be a little bigger in diameter. we can use the diameter of our own Sun to estimate transit time and call it conservative.
the Sun has a diameter of 864,000 miles. divided by 3,700,000 miles/hour gives 14 minutes. at least.
the Sun has a surface temperature of 5,778 K. that thing would have a surface temperature of 7600 to 10,000 K. definitely hotter and upwards of twice as hot.
ground temp at the Hiroshima blast was estimated at 6,000 K. for a second or whatever. we would get it for 14 minutes.
burned to a crisp
The rings around various planets may be such an object that broke up during capture and transition or one of our planets that took a hit and came apart...
One only must look to the surface of the moon to see how often things impact it...
The gas giants in the outer system act like a shield defending earth from impacts - so does our moon...
We have watched giant objects strike the gas giants.
I think there are now a great number of confirmed super strike craters on earth including the new found one in Greenland...
At least with a wayward sun we get a warning - as it emits light - which of course travels at light speed...
I think if our sun simply stopped shining it would take seven minutes before we would stop seeing light...
You should be more concerned about the Yellowstone super volcano.
Or earth getting bulldozed to make way for an interstellar freeway on ramp.
Mike
At least our media wouldn't have the time to lie to us! I may be a bit spoiled (or perhaps selfish is a better word) in my thinking but if death comes for me and takes all of mankind along with all of life on our planet at the same moment.....
my fears about death seem diminished to the point of no fear at all.
We have enough gun laws, what we need is IDIOT control.
Blood makes you related. Loyalty makes you family.
I thought getting old would take longer. :shock:
Like Kurgan once said "it's better burn out, than to fade away". I doubt we'll be screaming like Sarah Conner in the dream sequence before we're dust on that day.
There were hundreds of hours on the 'approaching disaster' on every TV newscast, in magazines and newspapers everywhere.
We have enough gun laws, what we need is IDIOT control.
Blood makes you related. Loyalty makes you family.
I thought getting old would take longer. :shock:
Novel by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
Or the stand by Stephen King
Mike
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_50