13 ms·
Not long ago, the center of the Milky Way exploded
- a_t48 7y agoDoes 3.5M years ago count as “not long ago” in astronomy time scales?
- quickthrower2 7y agoAccording to the article, yes.
- Aardwolf 7y agoI would say so, it's even short on Earth time scale.
- saalweachter 7y agoWhenever timespans like this come up, it always reminds me of the opening from Now and Then, Here and There: Because ten billion years’ time is so fragile, so ephemeral… it arouses such as a bittersweet, almost heartbreaking fondness.
- atoav 7y agoI think 3.5M years aren’t even that long ago in geological time scales.
- kozak 7y agoAccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_history_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_h..., that's when "Blue whales grew to their modern sizes". So it's fairly recent not just in astronomy scales.
- rbanffy 7y agoIn cosmological terms, it's more like "earlier today". Our ancestors were already walking around, talking to black monoliths and crushing skulls by then.
- ifdefdebug 7y agoI hate that movie.
- rbanffy 7y agoI'm sorry about that. I love it. :-)
- unnouinceput 7y agoWhich movie?
- alexgmcm 7y ago2001: A Space Odyssey.
- jes5199 7y ago“2001, a space odyssey”. post above is making a reference to the opening scene
- mellosouls 7y ago2001, specifically https://youtu.be/ypEaGQb6dJk https://youtu.be/ypEaGQb6dJk
- aswanson 7y agoI've never seen it.
- jacobush 7y agoYou should get that fixed.
- 725686 7y agoForget the movie. I didn't like it either. Read the book. It's fantastic.
- 7y ago
- hanoz 7y agoIt's very nearly 3.5 days in terms of a middle aged person's lifetime, which is an interesting rule of thumb I think I've just discovered.
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoso ... wild guess 37 years * 365 days = 13,500 days universe has existed for 13.5 billion years So each day in a middle aged life is 1 million of the universe's years. I like it ! :-) * This flare: Last Friday * Dinosaur extinction: 3rd of August * Pangea breaks apart: about Valentines day * Earth formed: June 2007 * Universe Born: 1982 Of course this means the Universe would have listened to Flock Of Seagulls as a kid, and loved Knight Rider.
- Intermernet 7y agoDammit, I'm older than the universe. There's a happy thought.
- dredmorbius 7y ago"When I was born, time didn't exist." https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2b4kpg/conspiracy_and_an_offbyone_error/cj2qoom/?context=4 https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2b4kpg/conspir...
- dandare 7y agoThe puzzling thing is that first life appeared around Xmas 2009, just days after the lava cooled down. (probably)
- johnisgood 7y agoKnight Rider! Oh my sweet childhood. :D
- jacobush 7y agoBest I read all day
- 7y ago
- dredmorbius 7y agoThe Milky Way is ~150,000 - 250,000 light years across, and rotates -- call it a galactic year -- once every 240 million years. At that scale, 3.5 million years would be like about 5 days relative to Earth's year. So: earlier this week, more or less.
- nerdponx 7y agoThey said the flare lasted 300,000 years, but how quickly does something like this start? How fast does it go from "nothing" to "full strength"? Also if there was any form of life orbiting a star in the path of this flair, is it safe to assume that said life is no longer alive? At least if that life resembles us in its tolerance (or lack thereof) for radiation.
- yourapostasy 7y ago> Also if there was any form of life orbiting a star in the path of this flair... Based upon a couple other articles I read [1] [2], it sounds unlikely there were other galaxies or smaller structures in the path of this flare. I only see references to a very directional cone at the poles of the Milky Way, and the cone only intersects a trail of gases left behind by the Magellanic Stream. Were there somehow orphaned planets, solar systems or smaller galaxies in the path of those cones not mentioned in the articles however, then the gamma rays, X-rays and highly ionizing gases in those cones of energy would certainly strip away most if not all of the atmosphere of any Earth-like planet, and kill all forms of life as we know it unless it was in some kind of weird, tidally-locked configuration that kept one side always facing the originating, ejecting side of the cone. These flares would make a great plot device setup for a story in the Xeelee Sequence or /r/HFY. We find out the flares are deployed as weapons, used as a kind of galactic-scale sawed-off shotgun against another galaxy. Or the flares are galactic-grade energy reactor experiments gone horribly awry, and are the cause of one Great Filter at the Kardashev Type-III scale. [1] https://www.sciencealert.com/something-in-the-centre-of-our-galaxy-colossally-erupted-3-5-million-years-ago https://www.sciencealert.com/something-in-the-centre-of-our-... [2] https://earthsky.org/space/explosion-milky-way-center-seyfert-flare-magellanic-stream https://earthsky.org/space/explosion-milky-way-center-seyfer...
- jacobush 7y agoIs there a name for some kind of inverted Kardashev scale, where higher civilizations decide to slow down and go miniature, conserving as much energy and information as possible? Possibly as a) some kind of bet to hide from other civilizations and b) to delay the heat death as long as possible.
- rbanffy 7y agoI guess that's why we won't be hearing radio signals from the Magellanic clouds... Now, seriously, what would be a safe distance for an Earth like planet to be from such an unlucky event?
- mirimir 7y agoAs I recall, neither of our galaxy's jets are pointing near the solar system. And we're distant, and relatively well shielded. So I doubt that there could be any danger. If you were on axis, though, anything "in" the galaxy would be at risk. Given that we see jets in other galaxies that are longer than their radii.
- rbanffy 7y agoI would imagine all Earth-like planets in the Magellan's clouds would be thoroughly cooked.
- mirimir 7y ago3C 273's visible jet is "~200 kly (60 kpc) long".[0] There's even a Hubble image.[1] Our galaxy is about 150-200 kly in diameter.[2] And the Large Magellanic Cloud is ~163 kly away.[3] So yeah. 0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3C_273 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3C_273 1) https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-hubble-gets-the-best-image-of-bright-quasar-3c-273/ https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-hubble-gets-the-b... 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way 3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Magellanic_Cloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Magellanic_Cloud
- leemailll 7y agoSo for laymen as us, how far is the center from us in light years?
- andyjohnson0 7y ago26,490 ± 100 light years or 8,122 ± 31 parsecs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center
- rwmj 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A%2a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A%2a 26000 light years
- sago 7y agoGive the (Monty) Python headline on today's HN, let me add that it's worth learning to sing https://youtu.be/buqtdpuZxvk https://youtu.be/buqtdpuZxvk I find. The exact numbers are not quite exact, although they are usually in the right ballpark. "We are 30,000 light-years from Galactic central point." But I found it so useful knowing that song over the years.
- mannykannot 7y agoWhen this was first noticed (2013) I recall statements (possibly speculative) that the irradiated part of the Magellanic Stream might have glowed brightly enough to be visible in the night sky. If so, it would have subtended about half a degree, about the same width as the moon and the sun.
- ianai 7y agoAnd here we are stuck with just a sun and moon!
- andyljones 7y agoPaper: http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~jbh/share/Papers/JBH-Ionization-Cones-Oct19.pdf http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~jbh/share/Papers/JBH-Ionizat...
- keyle 7y agoThey said it would have been a massive event, but what would our ancestors have seen?
- jwr 7y agoFor those of us who read Larry Niven's sci-fi novels, this headline is… both amusing and somewhat scary.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y agoAnd for those of us who do not, can you elaborate as to why exactly?
- drdeadringer 7y agoI believe the story referenced is "At The Core", where stars at the core of the galaxy have gone supernova and thereby started a supernova chain reaction expanding outward from the core into the surrounding stars of the galaxy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Core
- ceejayoz 7y agoThe galactic core exploding is a major plot point driving the Known Space series.
- simonh 7y agoIn one of Niven's short stories an alien corporation hires a Human pilot to fly to the galactic core. It's a publicity stunt to demonstrate the speed and range of a new FTL drive. When he gets close to the core, his ship is almost fried by the radiation wave front coming from a chain reaction explosion of suns in the galactic core. This drives events in many of Niven's later stories. The devastation won't reach 'Known Space' for thousands of years, but the alien Puppeteers that funded the trip are paranoid herbivores. They immediately start a mass exodus of their whole species out of the galaxy, causing a massive economic crash along with many effects on other plot lines. Niven's Known Space future (and past) history is an amazing and incredibly influential achievement. Highly recommended. Most of it consists of collections of short stories and novellas written over decades, so it's very digestible.
- vonseel 7y ago
- FrameworkFred 7y agoGiven that we're able to aim telescopes at things that are billions of light years away, I wonder how close we are to being able to see the reflection of such a thing when it actually happens on some celestial body 3.5 million light years away.
- raattgift 7y agoYou might be interested in the examples section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_echo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_echo
- ljf 7y agoI remember as a child thinking I had fixed time travel (in a very limited sense) when I wondered why we didn't just stick a bunch of mirrors far far away, and then aim them back at the earth and use telescopes to look back at the dinosaurs etc. While that wouldn't work for heaps of reasons, I like your idea. I guess the issue would be discerning 'when' such a thing happened, and finding the right item to look back at, which would be a difficult challenge...
- smudgymcscmudge 7y agoI had the same idea. I forgot about it before I was old enough to reason about it. At the time I thought the size of the mirrors would be the biggest issue. I guess I thought faster-than-light travel was easy.
- indigo747 7y agoI have a distant childhood memory of a book based on this concept, in which the protagonist is projected back in time through light beams bounced off of distant mirrors. I think I stopped reading because I could tell the science was completely impossible, and ultimately just an excuse to write an historical fiction book which I didn't feel like reading. Perhaps I judged it too harshly?
- jandrese 7y agoIgnoring the problems with resolution, the big issue with this is you would need FTL travel to position the mirrors ahead of the light. And this in turn is one of the big reasons why FTL is probably impossible: It is in essence time travel.
- facethrowaway 7y agoI am guessing this would lead to solar system-scale destruction? Putting a base on Mars doesn’t seem like it would do much to counter such an event if it headed our way?
- michannne 7y agoMy opinion is that the idea of a base on Mars is not to somehow secure humanity's position in the Solar System, but to give us something to aim for so we have a reason to pump money into space exploration and aerospace research
- jp555 7y agoDon't you think two self-sufficient instances of a civilization separated by a ~dozen light-minutes decreases the risk of species extinction events?
- snowwrestler 7y agoI find it very hard to imagine a human civilization on Mars being self-sufficient. Getting there is not the hard part. The ecology of self-sufficiency is not something we understand currently, even on Earth.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoIndeed. If we were serious about colonizing mars we should first colonize portions of the earth that are currently uninhabitable (self-sufficiently). They all are much easier to get to and have significantly more favorable conditions than Mars, but for some reason no one tries to make the Arctic self-sustaining or wants to build a deep ocean colony.
- horsawlarway 7y agoWhy, though? It seems to me that the long term payoff of colonizing Mars is huge. The long term payoff of colonizing remote and inhospitable areas on earth is many, many orders of magnitude lower. I can maybe rationalize that effort if we simply assume that those areas are similar enough to Mars that the experience and technology developed while doing it could be applied effectively. But I'm not really convinced that most of that experience will transfer - The requirements to make a self-sustaining ocean colony or artic colony are wildly different from the tools and experience we'll need for Mars. At best we gain some general insights, but we'd still have to spend enormous resources developing the right tech and tools for Mars.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Yuval_Halevi 7y agoSo basically we are not on the way of bursts exploding from the poles of the center, we are perpendicular to the bursts trajectory?
- tejtm 7y agonormally
- _bxg1 7y agoThey probably would've mentioned this in the article were it the case, but I wonder if it was visible at all in the night sky? We can see part of the Milky Way, after all. I guess there wouldn't have been writing yet but could such a thing have made it into oral history? Was there even oral history yet?
- windsurfer 7y agoDust and gas surrounding the galactic center blocks almost all visible light. Sadly most events simple wouldn't be visible.
- onychomys 7y agoNo oral history, sorry. 3.5MYA, we were still Austropithecenes, basically as smart as a modern day chimp or gorilla, but bipedal. The little numbers in the tree here show divergence time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus#Phylogeny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus#Phylogeny
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kristianp 7y agoNo mention of what observations they made to come to this conclusion. Not in the press release I guess.
- teslaberry 7y agoHaving been an expert layperson reader of astronomy reserach for 2 decades....i would venture to speculate that the long lost connection between eliptical galaxies and spiral galaxies is not only an initial set of imabalnces in the inertia of the gas cloud but the distinct lack of a single galactic central black hole to clear the galaxy polar direction with massive polar vortex blast streams persistently over time.
- Faction 7y agoThey said the flare lasted 300,000 years, but how quickly does something like this start? How fast does it go from "nothing" to "full strength"?