A Supernova 'Destroyed' Some of Earth's Ozone For a Few Minutes In 2022 53
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: On Oct. 9, 2022, telescopes in space picked up a jet of high energy photons careening through the cosmos toward Earth, evidence of a supernova exploding 1.9 billion light-years away. Such events are known as gamma ray bursts, and astronomers who have continued studying this one said it was the "brightest of all time." Now, a team of scientists have discovered that this burst caused a measurable change in the number of ionized particles found in Earth's upper atmosphere, including ozone molecules, which readily absorb harmful solar radiation.
"The ozone was partially depleted -- was destroyed temporarily," said Pietro Ubertini, an astronomer at the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome who was involved in discovering the atmospheric event. The effect was detectable for just a few minutes before the ozone repaired itself, so it was "nothing serious," Dr. Ubertini said. But had the supernova occurred closer to us, he said, "it would be a catastrophe." The discovery, reported Tuesday in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrates how even explosions that occur far from our solar system can influence the atmosphere, which can be used as a giant detector for extreme cosmic phenomena.
To study the effects of last year's gamma ray burst on Earth, Dr. Ubertini and his colleagues looked for signals at the top of the ionosphere using data from the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite, an orbiter designed to study changes in the atmosphere during earthquakes. They identified a sharp jump in the electric field at the top of the ionosphere, which they correlated to the gamma ray burst signal measured by the European Space Agency's International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, a mission that launched in 2002 to observe radiation from faraway celestial objects. The researchers found that the electric field rose by a factor of 60 as gamma rays ionized (essentially knocking away electrons from) ozone and nitrogen molecules high in the atmosphere. Once ionized, the molecule is unable to absorb any ultraviolet radiation, temporarily exposing Earth to more of the sun's damaging rays.
"The ozone was partially depleted -- was destroyed temporarily," said Pietro Ubertini, an astronomer at the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome who was involved in discovering the atmospheric event. The effect was detectable for just a few minutes before the ozone repaired itself, so it was "nothing serious," Dr. Ubertini said. But had the supernova occurred closer to us, he said, "it would be a catastrophe." The discovery, reported Tuesday in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrates how even explosions that occur far from our solar system can influence the atmosphere, which can be used as a giant detector for extreme cosmic phenomena.
To study the effects of last year's gamma ray burst on Earth, Dr. Ubertini and his colleagues looked for signals at the top of the ionosphere using data from the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite, an orbiter designed to study changes in the atmosphere during earthquakes. They identified a sharp jump in the electric field at the top of the ionosphere, which they correlated to the gamma ray burst signal measured by the European Space Agency's International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, a mission that launched in 2002 to observe radiation from faraway celestial objects. The researchers found that the electric field rose by a factor of 60 as gamma rays ionized (essentially knocking away electrons from) ozone and nitrogen molecules high in the atmosphere. Once ionized, the molecule is unable to absorb any ultraviolet radiation, temporarily exposing Earth to more of the sun's damaging rays.
Ozone Layers, Slightly Used (Score:4, Funny)
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And what exactly has a gamma burst from a super nova that killed the ozone layer - for a short time - to do with climate change?
Obviously nothing.
And the scientists behind obviously have nothing to do with climate change either: they are astronomers.
Denier very much? Idiot very much?
Both very much?
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And what exactly has a gamma burst from a super nova that killed the ozone layer - for a short time - to do with climate change? Obviously nothing.
I believe that the comment "worst satire of climate change science I've ever seen" referred to the post that it was a reply to, to wit:
But if you ask me, the whole TFA is a bunch of lies! Us scientifically awaken people all know scientifically that only humans can cause problems to planet Earth! The science doesn't lie if if you don't believe me well, you don't believe in science!
and not to the article under discussion.
Paywall (Score:1)
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The article basically just says the same thing as the summary. A long time ago in a star system far, far away, a star exploded. Some of the gamma radiation made it to Earth but it was NBD. The end, cue dramatic orchestra music, roll credits.
If a supernova destroys (Score:3)
...the NY Times paywall, we'll throw it party and name a State after it.
Re:Paywall (Score:5, Interesting)
Theres a link to the paper in the description. You can get the bulk of it out of the abstract and discussion without having to get your hands dirty with the math. Theres a useful graph in there too that captures the gist of it.
In short however the GRB 221009A event (Involving a supernova around 2bil LY away) caused a notable chunk of the ozone to deionize very briefly.
Heres my concern however. If something 2bil LY away and ago (It kinda means away and ago kind of means the same thing in relativity when dealing with light speed) can do THAT, what the hell happens when Betelgeuse supernovas, which is due.... any day now (In astronomical terms so.... any time from today to 100K years from now, and that star is showing signs of hydroden depletion RIGHT NOW.). Betelgeuse is only 500-600LY away (we actually arent entirely sure since its so erratic it kinda messes up the measurements. Most likely around 550ish ly away).
That thing is expected to be the brightest thing in the night sky when it happens.
Someone really needs to do the math on this one, it could be a problem (No, it wont kill us, but it could wreck a lot of electronics and screw with the climate quite seriously for a short period, particularly if the phenomena in this paper is anything to go by)
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Re:Paywall (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe that the axis of spin has to be pointing at you, and I believe that we've resolved features moving on the surface of Betelgeuse via radio interferometry, which would hint that the axis can't be pointing at us. That's all from very rusty memories though.
Re:Paywall (Score:5, Informative)
Here you are.
https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
On 9 October 2022, for 7 minutes, high energy photons from a gigantic explosion 1.9 billion light-years away toasted one side of Earth as never before observed. The event, called a gamma ray burst (GRB), was 70 times brighter than the previous record holder. But what astronomers dub the “BOAT”—the brightest of all time—did more than provide a light show spanning the electromagnetic spectrum. It also ionized atoms across the ionosphere, which spans from 50 to 1000 kilometers in altitude, researchers say. The findings highlight the faint but real risk of a closer burst destroying Earth’s protective ozone layer.
“It was such a massive event, it affected all levels of the atmosphere,” says solar physicist Laura Hayes of the European Space Agency (ESA).
Astronomers aren’t yet sure what causes a GRB, which we see shining as intensely as a bright star in the Milky Way, despite being billions of times more distant. To hurl so much energy across billions of light-years, GRBs must be among the biggest explosions since the big bang. At least some of them may be born in a particular type of supernova that occurs when a dying, massive star collapses into a neutron star or black hole. A typical GRB releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime.
Even by those standards, the October 2022 event, known as GRB 221009A, was exceptional, saturating detectors on NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and leaving an afterglow at longer visible wavelengths that even amateur astronomers could see for hours.
When Hayes heard that detectors on ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft had picked up x-rays from GRB 221009A, she wondered whether the event might have been witnessed by another instrument she had been using to detect the impact of solar flares on the ionosphere. That instrument, called SuperSID, is a simple antenna at Ireland’s Dunsink Observatory tuned to pick up very low frequency (VLF) radio signals. Because VLF waves can penetrate saltwater, militaries use them to communicate with submarines. The waves can also travel thousands of kilometers around the globe by bouncing between the sea surface and charged particles in the lower ionosphere. SuperSID can’t decrypt naval messages, but it can analyze changes in the shape and strength of passing VLF signals to gather information on the state of the lower ionosphere.
When Hayes looked back in the SuperSID data to 9 October 2022, she saw a jump in the strength of a VLF signal at the time GRB 221009A occurred, one that was roughly equivalent in size to the effect of a small to medium solar flare, she and a colleague reported in Research Notes of the AAS in October 2022. The observation showed that the burst’s photons were reaching down to just 60 kilometers above the surface and ionizing more molecules in the air, creating a better reflector. Past VLF detections of GRBs had occurred at night, when they weren’t drowned out by the Sun’s activity. This time, the researchers caught one in the middle of the day. “We were surprised it was so big,” Hayes says. “It overcame even the Sun.
But what of the rest of the ionosphere? It also was stirred up, a second fortuitous observation shows. Mirko Piersanti, a space weather scientist at the University of L’Aquila, and colleagues were analyzing data from a small satellite called the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES), which aims to sense earthquake precursors from their impact on the upper ionosphere. The satellite orbits at 507 kilometers altitude and measures the characteristics of particles in the rarified atmosphere around it.
CSES happened to be in the right place to witness the strike of GRB 221009A. It recorded a spike in the electric field of the region of ionos
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More specifically, they want to be able to pay their reporters.
If you want amateur reporting, just read slashdot comments.
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We bitch about ads and we bitch about paywalls. Not sure how we excpect these "news" orginzations to stay afloat.
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I believe that is [checks notes] "fabiomb ( 5315421 )" 's job. If you see him/ her/ it/ them, slap them around the head and tell them to write up a submission to the editors. The link is on every served page, behind a big green button labelled "Submit".
That's the thing about sites that depend on users to supply content : they depend on users to supply content.
(I grant that it's a couple of months since I submitted anything ; but with well over a hundred artic
More support for Electric Universe theory? (Score:1)
Amirite?
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Re: More support for Electric Universe theory? (Score:2)
So is science jyst denialism?
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Yes, the Smart Current and the Reasoning Voltage decided to get rid of all earthly life and are currently performing tests on the effects.
Destroyed? (Score:4, Informative)
Temporarily ionized is not destroyed. Inconvenient, though, while it lasts.
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Temporarily ionized is not destroyed. Inconvenient, though, while it lasts.
Clickbait profit is generated. Inconvenient to truth, but still considered a valued effort while it lasts.
(I feel for anyone having to learn the definitions of commonly used terms today. No wonder the kids are as medicated as the adults.)
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When you need scare-quotes in aa headline, it's always a bad headline.
"Journalism".
This is bad news, isn't it? (Score:1)
This means that one supernova in close proximity (by cosmical standards) can screw up life on earth as we know it, on top of the epic damage we've already done on our own. Meaning we have to add this to our list of potential external extinction level events. Correct? Or am I missing something here?
Re:This is bad news, isn't it? (Score:5, Informative)
You can do the math yourself, I'll get you started.
For type II SN, you need a star above 8 solar masses. For type Ia, you need a convenient binary made of a massive dwarf (or a neutron star), of a bit above 1.2 solar masses and a massive donor. It is by no means certain that you'll get a SN explosion, but that's the rough minimum.
The total energy of a "minimal" SN type II is huge, something on the order of 10^58-10^61 keV, which gives you an expected total fluence of something like 10^57 660keV photons. Starting from this number and assuming some distance, you can easily calculate the minimum risk for a deadly effective dose from a minimal SN, and then count the number of candidate stars.
If it is big, then be afraid, be very afraid.
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Alternative take : 96% killing efficiency is insufficient. As anyone who sees a disinfectant advert touting "kills 99% of all known germs" - which translates as "leaves 1% of known germs and an unknown proportion of unknown germs alive".
The IDF and Hamas need to rememb
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Looking at the fossil record would be the same as just looking at the number of supernova candidates in our immediate vicinity - quick and boring.
Why pass up such an opportunity to study interesting bits of astronomy, nuclear physics, dosimetry and biology?
Not really bad news (Score:5, Informative)
This means that one supernova in close proximity (by cosmical standards) can screw up life on earth as we know it
Yes, it could but it would have to be within 100-200 lightyears. GRBs of the magnitude observed in this article are not typical supernova and given how far they can be seen are also incredibly rare. The good news is that overall the chance of the Earth getting hit by a supernova or GRB in a way that seriously affects life is very, very small. We only seem to get mass extinction events every ~100 million years and for the five that have occurred since multicellular life evolved none have been attributed to supernovae.
So either these events are vanishingly rare i.e. none in 500 million years or they do not actually seriously affect life - at the level of causing extinctions - when they occur although they could make life very unpleasant for a while.
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If I recall correctly, _very_ high mass stars only formed in the early universe. They also have shorter lifespans. This means that all of the more dangerous candidate stars near to us would already have gone supernova, and it's only the long-travelling bursts from ancient explosions a long way away that we now see. I think that the 100-200 LY limit comes from the fact that the upper mass of stars around today is low enough that they aren't a danger beyond that range.
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If I recall correctly, _very_ high mass stars only formed in the early universe. They also have shorter lifespans.
Clearly, such stars are still forming otherwise we would not have seen the GRB we did see (assuming it is actually due to a massive star) since it only happend 1.9 billion years ago, more than 11 billion years after the Big Bang and even stars like the sun only last about 10 billion years and really large stars last under 100 million years.
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You do stupid very well, congrats.
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Yeah, look up mass extinction cycles.
Our solar system drifts up and down above the plane of the galactic ecliptic on a regular cycle so we don't get the buffer of the apparent Milky Way for many centuries and life on Earth gets baked by super-massive black hole radiation.
What survives is usually very different than what didn't.
Trilobites and tardigades excepted, of course.
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Which doesn't mean they didn't have a cause - just that we haven't found and recognised evidence of such a cause. And for
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No, this is what the ozone is layer is for. It will deplete itself when being used, but it is how we avoid dying out every few centuries.
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You want to say _another_ supernova, let's say in 10 or 100 light years range?
Yes, definitely.
But that one was 1.9 _BILLION_ light years away.
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No.
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You're replying to an example of Poe's law.
This time (Score:2)
This time, it's personal.