4 ms·

What if we are quietly watching from a distance (in both space and time) as thousands of civilizations are helplessly irradiated to death by gamma rays?

by api 2y ago

lukan 2y ago
Or enlightened and transformed to a higher dimension? The answer is probably the same. We would not know and continue our daily chores.
robofanatic 2y ago
What we are watching right now has happened millions of years in the past.
nikbackm 2y ago
It's not likely that life will survive long enough to form civilizations that close to a black hole. It has probably fed like this many times before already.
- denton-scratch 2y ago
  > that close to a black hole How close to a black hole? This isn't a common-or-garden black hole, it's supermassive. If it's (300M years ago) suddenly started producing intense radiation that we can measure here, then I assume that anyone in the galaxy that can see the central region is receiving a lot of radiation, as well as a storm of high-energy particles.
greggsy 2y ago
It’s around 300 million light years away, so this technically occurred a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. With that in mind, I can imagine that millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
- dylan604 2y ago
  So what you're suggesting is that this might be a blast from the Death Star and we just saw Alderaan get wiped out?
  - slowmovintarget 2y ago
    No. The scale is galactic, not planetary.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      So it's even worse: the Galactic Empire has built an even bigger Death Star which can destroy an entire star (or cause it to collapse into a black hole)?
      - dylan604 2y ago
        No, now you've confused SciFi universes. Red Matter is a Star Trek plot.
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        No, I'm not confused at all. There is no "red matter" in Star Trek. Are you one of those people who continues to insist falsely that there was more than 1 Matrix movie, or more than 3 Star Wars movies?
- BubbleRings 2y ago
  > …now radiating much more light at ultraviolet… I noticed that too <grin> Is this too far away to try to detect the gravitational waves, if it made some? I forget, do gravitational waves travel at C?
  - danparsonson 2y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitational_wave_observations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitational_wave_o... Seems well within range; and yes they travel at C - there have been some LIGO observations that were successfully correlated with more traditional (e.g. optical or radio) observations.
HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
Well, some alien species a few hundred million light years away, with a big telescope, could be currently watching the Chicxulub meteor hit earth, and all the dinosaurs subsequently starving to death.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  65 million light years away, unless there is a system of giant mirrors out there. It is a nice thought though. That was a real rough day for Earth, but we turned out alright in the end.
  - steve_adams_86 2y ago
    It just occurred to me that if dinosaurs never existed here and we found them somewhere else, they’d be such an incredible discovery. We’re lucky to have such an awesome history of life on this planet.
    - lukan 2y ago
      "We’re lucky to have such an awesome history of life on this planet." We are probably lucky, to have life at all.
      - vlovich123 2y ago
        Humans are probably unique. Intelligent life probably not and life at all is likely commonplace. It would be quite a miracle if given the size and scale of the universe Earth is the only place where life arose and also managed to evolve multiple intelligent species also emerged (cephalopods, dolphins, elephants, and primates at least)
        wruza 2y ago
        It depends. If simple life is common, how rare is GOE or a similar event? If GOE is not that rare, it feels like intelligent life is just a matter of time, ice ages and enough branches to grab on. Otoh if we are the result of a long domino chain, the universe life is screwed.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
The death of one individual is a tragedy, the death of a billion civilizations is an HN comment.

What if we are quietly watching from a distance (in both space and time) as thousands of civilizations are helplessly irradiated to death by gamma rays?

by api 2y ago

What if we are quietly watching from a distance (in both space and time) as thousands of civilizations are helplessly irradiated to death by gamma rays?

lukan 2y ago

Or enlightened and transformed to a higher dimension? The answer is probably the same. We would not know and continue our daily chores.

robofanatic 2y ago

What we are watching right now has happened millions of years in the past.

nikbackm 2y ago

It's not likely that life will survive long enough to form civilizations that close to a black hole. It has probably fed like this many times before already.

denton-scratch 2y ago
> that close to a black hole How close to a black hole? This isn't a common-or-garden black hole, it's supermassive. If it's (300M years ago) suddenly started producing intense radiation that we can measure here, then I assume that anyone in the galaxy that can see the central region is receiving a lot of radiation, as well as a storm of high-energy particles.

greggsy 2y ago

It’s around 300 million light years away, so this technically occurred a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. With that in mind, I can imagine that millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

dylan604 2y ago
So what you're suggesting is that this might be a blast from the Death Star and we just saw Alderaan get wiped out?
- slowmovintarget 2y ago
  No. The scale is galactic, not planetary.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    So it's even worse: the Galactic Empire has built an even bigger Death Star which can destroy an entire star (or cause it to collapse into a black hole)?
    - dylan604 2y ago
      No, now you've confused SciFi universes. Red Matter is a Star Trek plot.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        No, I'm not confused at all. There is no "red matter" in Star Trek. Are you one of those people who continues to insist falsely that there was more than 1 Matrix movie, or more than 3 Star Wars movies?
BubbleRings 2y ago
> …now radiating much more light at ultraviolet… I noticed that too <grin> Is this too far away to try to detect the gravitational waves, if it made some? I forget, do gravitational waves travel at C?
- danparsonson 2y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitational_wave_observations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitational_wave_o... Seems well within range; and yes they travel at C - there have been some LIGO observations that were successfully correlated with more traditional (e.g. optical or radio) observations.

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago

Well, some alien species a few hundred million light years away, with a big telescope, could be currently watching the Chicxulub meteor hit earth, and all the dinosaurs subsequently starving to death.

BurningFrog 2y ago
65 million light years away, unless there is a system of giant mirrors out there. It is a nice thought though. That was a real rough day for Earth, but we turned out alright in the end.
- steve_adams_86 2y ago
  It just occurred to me that if dinosaurs never existed here and we found them somewhere else, they’d be such an incredible discovery. We’re lucky to have such an awesome history of life on this planet.
  - lukan 2y ago
    "We’re lucky to have such an awesome history of life on this planet." We are probably lucky, to have life at all.
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      Humans are probably unique. Intelligent life probably not and life at all is likely commonplace. It would be quite a miracle if given the size and scale of the universe Earth is the only place where life arose and also managed to evolve multiple intelligent species also emerged (cephalopods, dolphins, elephants, and primates at least)
      - wruza 2y ago
        It depends. If simple life is common, how rare is GOE or a similar event? If GOE is not that rare, it feels like intelligent life is just a matter of time, ice ages and enough branches to grab on. Otoh if we are the result of a long domino chain, the universe life is screwed.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

The death of one individual is a tragedy, the death of a billion civilizations is an HN comment.