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Supernova in 1006
- asicsp 3y ago>Modern astronomers now consider its distance from Earth to be about 7,200 light-years or 2,200 parsecs. >SN 1006 lies well beyond 1 kiloparsec, and it did not appear to have significant effects on Earth. However, a signal of its outburst can be found in nitrate deposits in Antarctic ice. Something from 7200 light years had an effect on Earth!
- throwbadubadu 3y agoAnd at below 160 light years it could already show damaging effects (earthsky.org)
- rnk 3y agoI searched there and found this interesting article https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/safe-distance-from-a-supernova-earth/ https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/safe-distance-from...
- qubex 3y agoThis is part of why I laugh like crazy whenever in Star Trek something is presented as being an instantaneous existential threat to the whole galaxy.
- Physkal 3y agochuckles at the thought of Star Trek: Generations 7200 year runtime.
- poszlem 3y agoIn a world with faster than light drive, isn't that a possibility, though?
- heinrich5991 3y agoFaster-than-light travel is basically ruled out by our current understanding of physics, AFAICT.
- trey-jones 3y agoKeeping an open mind about it, our understanding of physics is based on light-enabled observations, so if there is something that moves faster than light, we wouldn't be able to detect it anyway, yes?
- simonh 3y agoIf it can have causal effects then we can detect it. If it can't, who cares.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoIf there was something that moved faster than light, that still interacted with regular matter in some way, then yes, we would be able to detect it by the effects.
- roywiggins 3y agoYou can hear things that are going faster than the speed of sound, so I don't see why something that is outrunning its own light would be invisible. You wouldn't see it coming, but you would see it leaving. If it's not transparent then you'd see its shadow, if it smashed its way through a planet you'd see the hole, etc.
- lloeki 3y agoYou would actually see it departing both forward and backwards. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon
- Retric 3y agoFTL is baked in to the expansion of the universe. Just not in a useful way so you can’t get somewhere faster than light could.
- mseepgood 3y agoIt had an effect on the astrologers/astronomers who observed and recorded it. While doing that they didn't make love with their wives, and the ancestor of a person who would have killed Hitler was not conceived.
- malfist 3y agoHow do you Godwin in the second comment on an astronomy thread?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- freework 3y agoThere is something about this article that kind of annoys me. It's my understanding that back in the year 1006, the entire world was not using the same calendar. Each of these observations would not have been recorded as simply "May 1, 1006", they would have been in each observer's respective calendar... Yet this article just states them as being recorded on the same day using the Julian/Gregorian calendar format that we use today. I would have liked the article to go into more detail about how they were able to sync up the dates across the various calendar systems.
- heja2009 3y agoHmm, but this is a very common problem particularly in history and archaeology and one that requires highly specialized expertise. Therefore almost always a modern unified calendar is used in new publications and the problem of dealing with historical dates as written is left to specialists. I don't think every article about per-modern events and events outside Gregorian-based calendar usage should mention that.
- nine_k 3y agoThis is Wikipedia. If you possess the knowledge about local calendars of the time, go on and improve the article. For astronomical research, it's easiest when events are dated using one calendar to correlate the observations across the whole planet. No matter which calendar specifically, it just must be uniform. For cultural research, it's more important to use a local calendar and e.g. see how the supernova was related to other culturally significant events. Also, an article written in English is bound to use the Gregorian or Julian calendar which is familiar to the readers. An article written in Arabic, or Hebrew, or Tamil, or Malay may use the respective different calendars instead, as familiar to the readers.
- owl57 3y ago> An article written in Arabic, or Hebrew, or Tamil, or Malay may use the respective different calendars instead, as familiar to the readers. Extrapolating from the only example I know, I wouldn't bet on it. Before moving to Israel I knew that Rosh HaShanah (Hebrew New Year) is a public holiday and Gregorian New Year isn't, so I expected Hebrew calendar to be somewhat visible in everyday life or at least in official documents. Turns out, with the exception of holidays — to some surprise, including the decidedly secular Independence Day — it really isn't, everyone uses Gregorian.
- siraben 3y agoI thought this was an interesting historical note: > By December, it was again sighted in the constellation Di. The Chinese astrologer Zhou Keming, who was on his return to Kaifeng from his duty in Guangdong, interpreted the star to the emperor on May 30 as an auspicious star, yellow in color and brilliant in its brightness, that would bring great prosperity to the state over which it appeared. The reported color yellow should be taken with some suspicion, however, because Zhou may have chosen a favorable color for political reasons.
- azurezyq 3y agohaha, you know, he's not a scientist in our current definition. His career and personal life is much more important than the star which is 7200 light years away. Checked the history a bit, he seems to be very successful and served emperor for multiple decades.
- displaynone 3y ago> Petroglyphs by the Hohokam in White Tank Mountain Regional Park, Arizona, and by the Ancestral Puebloans in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico, have been interpreted as the first known North American representations of the supernova, though other researchers remain skeptical. Glad that this skepticism is noted, the evidence presented seems extremely dubious - I can't imagine the constellation Scorpio was recognized by indigenous in America of that time.
- Loughla 3y agoAre you saying they wouldn't have recognized the star pattern or the actual "Scorpio"? Because it seems trivial for a culture to identify a similar pattern of closely grouped stars they could use for navigation, correct? This is why I don't think I understand what you're saying.
- dghughes 3y agoI think they may mean because star patterns are not fixed so it never existed in that form at that time. Constellations as imagined by humans change surprisingly quickly but to humans and our short lifespan they seem to be forever.
- SamBorick 3y agoThat's not accurate. Star movements are on the order of mili-arcseconds per year. So around 1 arcsecond per star in a random direction over the last thousand years. Constellations would be different, but close enough that we could recognize. I don't understand why people in this thread think is so unreasonable that a culture saw a new star in the sky 1/4 the brightness of the moon for 3 months, and somebody bothered to carve it on a rock. https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/45256 https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/45256
- krisoft 3y ago> I don't understand why people in this thread think is so unreasonable that a culture saw a new star in the sky 1/4 the brightness of the moon for 3 months, and somebody bothered to carve it on a rock. I think that is reasonable. That is not the question. The question is, would they have associated that part of the sky with a scorpion? Stars on the sky are natural and people all around the world see them. But "constellations" are human made groupings. Their names, and even which stars are part of one constellation vs the other is culture dependent. Your people might see an oxen carriage in one part of the sky, but if there is very little or no contact between our peoples mine might see a bear. And you might describe a particularly bright star as the yoke of the carriage, while my people would describe it as the feet of the bear pattern we see. Same stars, different patterns imagined into them, and different names for the pattern. Are you with me so far? Now the problem is that the Hohokam petroglyph displays a scorpion. And scorpion is an animal which we in this day and age associate with the part of the sky where this supernova was. But did people of that age also see a scorpion when they looked up at that part of the sky? Just as a concrete example read this part of the wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpius#Culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpius#Culture "Javanese people of Indonesia call this constellation Banyakangrem ("the brooded swan") or Kalapa Doyong ("leaning coconut tree")[14] due to the shape similarity. In Hawaii, Scorpius is known as the demigod Maui's Fishhook" In traditional Chinese naming the same area of the sky would be called "Heart", "Room" and "Tail" of the "Azure Dragon of the East": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpius_in_Chinese_astronomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpius_in_Chinese_astronomy The question is not how much the stars physically drifted, but how much cultural recognition of star patterns have drifted.
- Igor_Wiwi 3y agoWhat is the soonest supernova explosion we can observe?
- arc-in-space 3y agoI think just about everyone wishes we knew!
- 26fingies 3y agoFrom what I've seen out on the internet Betelgeuse is the most likely next relatively close supernova. There were some recent predictions this would be in 10's of years, I don't know how true that is.
- alex_young 3y agoIt's more on the order of 100k years, give or take 100k. I wouldn't put odds on seeing it in our lifetimes.
- pfdietz 3y agoWe can't know that for sure. A double degenerate type Ia SN progenitor, for example, would right now be a pair of inspiraling white dwarf stars, quite dim. Maybe if/when LISA is in orbit we could detect the gravitational waves from that process? https://lisa.nasa.gov/ https://lisa.nasa.gov/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- joelshep 3y agoIn our galaxy, or anywhere? In our galaxy, potentially 1-3 times per century but there are reasons (besides probabilities being what they are) that we humans haven't actually observed one in some time: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-milky-supernovae-millennium.html https://phys.org/news/2021-01-milky-supernovae-millennium.ht... . Across the universe, the estimate is one star goes supernova every ten seconds. Actually observed: about 1-2 per week. There are systems and amateurs who regularly scan the night sky looking for evidence of supernovas and other "transient" objects. And a central database where they are reported: https://www.wis-tns.org/ https://www.wis-tns.org/ . Get an account and sign up for notifications, and you'll get several a week reporting things that probably went boom far, far, far away. Looking to place bets? Betelgeuse is considered a strong contender for the next supernova progenitor that we humans will see with our naked eyes, probably even during daylight hours.