4 ms·
>"Notably, you would be vaporized by gamma radiation from the collision several seconds before the gravitational waves became audible" How much lead shielding
by BitwiseFool 5y ago
>"Notably, you would be vaporized by gamma radiation from the collision several seconds before the gravitational waves became audible"
How much lead shielding would you need to survive such a thing? Would standing on the far side of an Earthlike planet absorb the gamma rays?
- Thorondor 5y agoYou'd need a lot of shielding. A planet is about the right order of magnitude, though it's still not clear that a human could survive. You wouldn't die of acute radiation poisoning; a few thousand km of rock would be enough to absorb the gamma rays. At 400 AU, you wouldn't immediately boil to death, either. Part of the collision-facing surface of the planet would be converted into plasma and ablated into space, which would insulate the rest of the planet from the worst of the heat. My guess is that you'd still die from shock waves propagating through either the atmosphere or the planet itself, but it's difficult to predict the exact effects.
- postalrat 5y agoCould the black hole itself shield you from the radiation while but not the gravity waves?
- treeman79 5y agoIn the right scenario the neutrinos would kill you. Aside from everything else. Read somewhere you would need a light year of lead to stop them
- jhgb 5y agoAre neutrinos produced in these mergers?
- treeman79 5y agoI think it was a super nova.
- ben_w 5y agoTechnically it’s possible to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation, but in practice you’d have to be inside a giant star while it’s going supernova: https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/