4 ms·

Can any astronomers comment on if we are in any danger of getting blasted with gamma radiation or other black hole excretions?

by MFLoon 7y ago

__jal 7y ago
No more so than you usually are. Which means it can happen to you at any time.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  So you're saying that this event told us nothing whatsoever about the state and stability of these things? Sure it could always happen at any time, that's not a very useful thing to say. More interesting is what this event teaches us, if anything.
_ph_ 7y ago
Do you feel some burning sensation?
NikkiA 7y ago
Any such radiation would have arrived with the light of the black hole flaring. The fact that you're alive to read this implies that nothing fatal happened.
- luc4sdreyer 7y ago
  Maybe some people did die, it's a bit too early to tell if it killed, say ten people. It's probably very unlikely though. More importantly, there is a very wide spectrum of danger between death and no effect, especially when you consider things like cancer. I assumed that was the point of the grandparent's question.
  - TearsInTheRain 7y ago
    Sounds like we should all just stay inside to be safe from the blackholes. That suits me just fine
  - kabdib 7y ago
    X-class flares from our sun are 10E32 or so ergs. The black hole flares were roughly 10E35 ergs, about a thousand times more energetic but they are about a billion times farther away than our sun. Apply N^2 law and . . . The amount of radiation you received from the Sagittarius flares is almost indescribably tiny. Many, many orders of magnitude less than the cosmic ray background radiation that we already live with. If you didn't have a sensor pointed right at the BH, you wouldn't be able to distinguish it from the noise.
- dnautics 7y ago
  you don't know that different frequencies of radiation aren't associated with different phases of a multistage event that play out over the course of a day or a month or a century.
  - adamisom 7y ago
    But you're missing the point, which is that it is more important to be right than alive
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- ALittleLight 7y ago
  I'm more concerned that the flare implies some instability that could presage a much more energetic event. I have extremely limited knowledge of space and astronomical phenomena, but super massive black holes seem like they may have enough mass/energy to cause problems for us in a worst possible case.
penagwin 7y ago
Not an astronomer but my understanding is that at any moment life on earth could be totally destroyed by things from space. * An undetected high velocity object * Radation bursts The thing is that since space is so big, we would have to be extremely unlikely to get hit. If a radation burst was directional it would still be like blindly throwing a dart and hitting a bullseye 24,000 light years away in this case. I believe it's possible for our Sun to emit a solar flare large enough to kill us too (this is far more likely then radiation from a blackhole killing us because its magnitudes closer).
- luc4sdreyer 7y ago
  > it would still be like blindly throwing a dart and hitting a bullseye 24,000 light years away in this case. I liked this analogy, so I felt inspired to calculated the odds. Particularly: the percentage of the "sky" (celestial sphere) that is covered by the Earth from Sagittarius A* 's perspective. That's equal to the two dimensional projection of the Earth onto a 26000 ly sphere around Sagittarius A*. cover% = π x (6371km)^2 / (4 x π x (26000 x 9.46 x 10^12 km)^2) x 100% = 1.677 x 10^-26 % I tried to put that number into "human terms", but the best I could come up with is it's the same as the width of a hair at Saturn's orbit, viewed from Earth.
  - dnadler 7y ago
    Slightly off topic, but one of my favorite solar system facts is that the with of Saturn's rings can be measured in feet. They are much thinner than I ever expected.
    - Eriksrocks 7y ago
      Sure, if you consider 3,200 feet as "measured in feet" [1]. Anything can technically be measured in feet. When you said that I assumed you meant they were like 20-30 feet thick, not over half a mile. [1] http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/108-How-large-are-Saturn-s-rings-#targetText=Saturn's%20rings%20are%20about%20175%2C000,between%20Earth%20and%20the%20Moon http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/108-How-large-are-Sat....
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
antognini 7y ago
No, this event occurred in the infrared, not at gamma wavelengths.

Can any astronomers comment on if we are in any danger of getting blasted with gamma radiation or other black hole excretions?

by MFLoon 7y ago

Can any astronomers comment on if we are in any danger of getting blasted with gamma radiation or other black hole excretions?

__jal 7y ago

No more so than you usually are. Which means it can happen to you at any time.

lucb1e 7y ago
So you're saying that this event told us nothing whatsoever about the state and stability of these things? Sure it could always happen at any time, that's not a very useful thing to say. More interesting is what this event teaches us, if anything.

_ph_ 7y ago

Do you feel some burning sensation?

NikkiA 7y ago

Any such radiation would have arrived with the light of the black hole flaring. The fact that you're alive to read this implies that nothing fatal happened.

luc4sdreyer 7y ago
Maybe some people did die, it's a bit too early to tell if it killed, say ten people. It's probably very unlikely though. More importantly, there is a very wide spectrum of danger between death and no effect, especially when you consider things like cancer. I assumed that was the point of the grandparent's question.
- TearsInTheRain 7y ago
  Sounds like we should all just stay inside to be safe from the blackholes. That suits me just fine
- kabdib 7y ago
  X-class flares from our sun are 10E32 or so ergs. The black hole flares were roughly 10E35 ergs, about a thousand times more energetic but they are about a billion times farther away than our sun. Apply N^2 law and . . . The amount of radiation you received from the Sagittarius flares is almost indescribably tiny. Many, many orders of magnitude less than the cosmic ray background radiation that we already live with. If you didn't have a sensor pointed right at the BH, you wouldn't be able to distinguish it from the noise.
dnautics 7y ago
you don't know that different frequencies of radiation aren't associated with different phases of a multistage event that play out over the course of a day or a month or a century.
- adamisom 7y ago
  But you're missing the point, which is that it is more important to be right than alive
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ALittleLight 7y ago
I'm more concerned that the flare implies some instability that could presage a much more energetic event. I have extremely limited knowledge of space and astronomical phenomena, but super massive black holes seem like they may have enough mass/energy to cause problems for us in a worst possible case.

penagwin 7y ago

Not an astronomer but my understanding is that at any moment life on earth could be totally destroyed by things from space. * An undetected high velocity object * Radation bursts The thing is that since space is so big, we would have to be extremely unlikely to get hit. If a radation burst was directional it would still be like blindly throwing a dart and hitting a bullseye 24,000 light years away in this case. I believe it's possible for our Sun to emit a solar flare large enough to kill us too (this is far more likely then radiation from a blackhole killing us because its magnitudes closer).

luc4sdreyer 7y ago
> it would still be like blindly throwing a dart and hitting a bullseye 24,000 light years away in this case. I liked this analogy, so I felt inspired to calculated the odds. Particularly: the percentage of the "sky" (celestial sphere) that is covered by the Earth from Sagittarius A* 's perspective. That's equal to the two dimensional projection of the Earth onto a 26000 ly sphere around Sagittarius A*. cover% = π x (6371km)^2 / (4 x π x (26000 x 9.46 x 10^12 km)^2) x 100% = 1.677 x 10^-26 % I tried to put that number into "human terms", but the best I could come up with is it's the same as the width of a hair at Saturn's orbit, viewed from Earth.
- dnadler 7y ago
  Slightly off topic, but one of my favorite solar system facts is that the with of Saturn's rings can be measured in feet. They are much thinner than I ever expected.
  - Eriksrocks 7y ago
    Sure, if you consider 3,200 feet as "measured in feet" [1]. Anything can technically be measured in feet. When you said that I assumed you meant they were like 20-30 feet thick, not over half a mile. [1] http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/108-How-large-are-Saturn-s-rings-#targetText=Saturn's%20rings%20are%20about%20175%2C000,between%20Earth%20and%20the%20Moon http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/108-How-large-are-Sat....

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

antognini 7y ago

No, this event occurred in the infrared, not at gamma wavelengths.