Jan 28, 2017 08:25 PM
Six cosmic catastrophes that could wipe out life on Earth
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/six-cos...e-on-earth
EXCERPT: If you ask yourself what the biggest threat to human existence is you’d probably think of nuclear war, global warming or a large-scale pandemic disease. But assuming we can overcome such challenges, are we really safe? Living on our blue little planet seems safe until you are aware of what lurks in space. The following cosmic disasters are just a few ways humanity could be severely endangered or even wiped out. Happy reading!
"The Biggest Mystery in Astrophysics Today" --Flashes from an Unknown Source Far Beyond the Milky Way
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/201...ay-to.html
EXCERPT: Perhaps the source "is a dwarf galaxy that contains a supermassive black hole, or is the nucleus of a disrupted galaxy or even just an isolated black hole,” Heino Falcke, a radio astronomer and astroparticle physicist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands told the LA Times about mystery milliseconds-long flashes detected by researchers at Cornell University and a global team. “Maybe the persistent source is something completely different – for example, an exploding star ‘disguised’ to look like a black hole. And are these bursts made by the black hole itself, or by something else in orbit around it? After all, supermassive black holes are typically surrounded by dense star clusters."
Once thinking these bursts had emanated from within the Milky Way galaxy, or from cosmic neighbors, the astronomers now confirm that they are long-distance flashes from across the universe – more than 3 billion light-years away [...] “Because these flashes last only a millisecond, you can’t just go back and look at that patch of sky at a different time and catch that fast radio burst,” said Shami Chatterjee, an astronomer at Cornell University [...] “You have to be looking at that right millisecond to be able to catch a fast radio burst. These radio flashes must have enormous amounts of energy to be visible from over 3 billion light-years away....”
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/six-cos...e-on-earth
EXCERPT: If you ask yourself what the biggest threat to human existence is you’d probably think of nuclear war, global warming or a large-scale pandemic disease. But assuming we can overcome such challenges, are we really safe? Living on our blue little planet seems safe until you are aware of what lurks in space. The following cosmic disasters are just a few ways humanity could be severely endangered or even wiped out. Happy reading!
"The Biggest Mystery in Astrophysics Today" --Flashes from an Unknown Source Far Beyond the Milky Way
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/201...ay-to.html
EXCERPT: Perhaps the source "is a dwarf galaxy that contains a supermassive black hole, or is the nucleus of a disrupted galaxy or even just an isolated black hole,” Heino Falcke, a radio astronomer and astroparticle physicist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands told the LA Times about mystery milliseconds-long flashes detected by researchers at Cornell University and a global team. “Maybe the persistent source is something completely different – for example, an exploding star ‘disguised’ to look like a black hole. And are these bursts made by the black hole itself, or by something else in orbit around it? After all, supermassive black holes are typically surrounded by dense star clusters."
Once thinking these bursts had emanated from within the Milky Way galaxy, or from cosmic neighbors, the astronomers now confirm that they are long-distance flashes from across the universe – more than 3 billion light-years away [...] “Because these flashes last only a millisecond, you can’t just go back and look at that patch of sky at a different time and catch that fast radio burst,” said Shami Chatterjee, an astronomer at Cornell University [...] “You have to be looking at that right millisecond to be able to catch a fast radio burst. These radio flashes must have enormous amounts of energy to be visible from over 3 billion light-years away....”