Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aardwolf | Hacker News Reader

So could you say that when we see such a gamma ray burst in a distant galaxy (which apparently occurs daily from our point of view), that's witnessing all life in that galaxy being wiped out?

This is pretty horrifying :/

View on HN

As I understand it GRBs are highly directional because the magnetic fields involved in the explosion for us energy into narrow beams. We see the events as GRBs when we cross through the path of the beam. When we see the same type of supernova from the side we still see a bright burst but not nearly as bright as as GRB. If a supernova goes off in your stellar neighborhood you might be screwed if you're in the beam of the GRB or just mildly inconvenienced (minor mass extinction) if you get a side view.

So the events causing GRBs are slightly less horrifying than galaxy-sterilizing monsters.

Would such a burst travel through the body of a planet? If not, perhaps only half of the galaxy’s life would be wiped out.

Absolutely, as if it was basically not there.

Surely the Earth would be too thick for that?

We're dealing with incomprehensible amounts of energy. GRBs are powered by the violent deaths of massive stars. Orbiting planets are inconsequential.

Have a fun paper!

Stars Bisected by Relativistic Blades

https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15347

I thought only neutrinos could do this?

It doesn't happen daily, does it? This one was a one in several thousand years event.

A GRBs is observed around daily according to Wikipedia.

The one here was a one in a thousand year in brightness, but that might have been due to being closer to us?

There are 100-200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. It may well be daily when you do the math.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com