Wolf-Rayet 1O4: Earth peeks into the gun barrel

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The Mayan calendar ends in 2012. Will life on Earth end in 2012? [no]


The Sun has a cycle of a solar maximum and solar minimum of activity. The solar cycle takes an average of about 11 years to go from one solar maximum to the next with an observed variation in duration of 9 to 14 years for any given solar cycle. Some scientists predict the Sun will enter an extraordinarily high solar maximum in 2012 or 2014. Or... it might not happen at all in our lifetime. We really don't have the instruments to accurately predict the solar weather. What a heightened solar activity results in is more powerful solar winds with more frequency. Solar winds are streams of charged particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. Earth's atmosphere usually defends us from most of these charged particles. Some solar winds however are more powerful, and Earth's atmosphere can't fully protect us from these massive bursts of solar winds called coronal mass ejections (CME).



The Earth is not going to end in 2012 however, and definitely not by CMEs. CMEs are potentially life-threatening, though not to such extent that it would result in mass extinction, and not directly. CMEs—if they hit Earth directly, which is a rare occurrence—cause aurorae to be seen down to the equator, and sends ultra-high voltage through power lines. This creates a strong magnetic field that induces another current in an on-going process. The current becomes so strong it melts the wires, which causes a release of a lot of energy, resulting the transformers to explode. All electricity disappears, and communication with it as satellites are burned out and drop down to Earth. The infrastructure will collapse. There will be no more tap-water and no more gas. This will stop transportation all together, and the stores will no longer be supplied. It goes without saying that a lot of lives will be in jeopardy. The last super CME struck in 1859. It disrupted telegraph service and created aurorae visible down to the equator.



The Sun is not the only star that is a potential threat to Earth though. In 2009, about 8,000 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Sagittarius a star was discovered that forms a potential threat to Earth. It's a Wolf-Rayet star called Wolf-Rayet 1O4. Wolf–Rayet stars are evolved, massive stars (over 20 solar masses), which are losing mass rapidly by means of a very strong stellar wind. Wolf-Rayet 1O4 however is different. It has a large cloud of dust around it. At the Keck Observatory in Hawai'i the star was inspected using an infra-red camera with multiple exposures to create a composited image. What the images revealed was a large tail that spirals the star. Scientists found out Wolf-Rayet 1O4 is in fact part of a binary system, meaning two stars orbit around their common center of mass. Binary systems are not rare. In fact, most star systems consist of two or even three stars. Both stars create stellar winds, but because they orbit each other, the stellar winds collide and gasses are compressed and dust and soot is created. The colliding winds do not spiral, but because the stars orbit around each other, a circular motion is added to the material which forms this long tail that spirals around both stars.



The fact that we can see this spiral is not at all good. Such massive stars like Wolf-Rayet stars live fast and die young ass they eject their mass so rapidly. They live for tens of millions of years rather than 10 billion years, which is the lifespan of main-sequence stars like the Sun. Wolf-Rayet 1O4 will die sometime in the next few hundred thousand years. At the end of its life it will go supernova, which means the massive star will eject its outer layers in a massive explosion while its core collapses onto itself and form a stellar black hole. As Wolf-Raeyet 1O4 is 8,000 light years away, its supernova is of no threat to us. So why is Wolf-Rayet 1O4 so dangerous, and why is the fact that we can see this spiral around the star a bad thing?



Scientists studied the orbit of Wolf-Rayet 1O4's tail of dust and came to a shocking realization. Its orbit reveals that we are looking directly at its axis. Some large stars—and potentially also Wolf-Rayet 1O4—spin incredibly fast on their own axis. When such a star collapses—provided its speed around its axis is sufficiently high—it produces a massive electric field. The energy from this magnetic field is turned into matter and anti-matter particles. As these collide, the most powerful energy beam in the electro-magnetic spectrum is unleashed: a gamma-ray burst. Gamma-rays bursts are devastating. The fact that we are looking right at a pole of Wolf-Rayet 1O4 means we are essentially looking into the barrel of a shotgun.  If this gamma-ray hits the Earth, it could deplete a large portion of the ozone layer, resulting in a mass extinction, as the five mass extinctions that preceded us.



© 2010 - 2024 MartinSilvertant
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DaOnlyOverlord's avatar
Loved the article but concerning the Mayan calander....I find it hard to trust a calander written by a people who couldn't predict thier own end.