From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sat Jul 31 1999 - 08:52:29 MDT
On Friday, July 30, 1999 8:58 PM Billy Brown <ewbrownv@mindspring.com>
wrote:
> >> However, at a
> >> distance of 1 light-year (9x10^12 kilometers), the energy density drops
> to
> >> less than one erg per square meter. That isn't even enough energy to
> >> damage electronics, let alone harm people.
> >
> > Energy density is not a realistic measure of danger.
>
> If it arrives as IR or UV it is completely harmless. If it arrives as
> visible light it is not nearly as bright as the sun. X-rays or gamma-rays
> will be completely blocked by a planetary atmosphere, and any space
habitat
> capable of surviving a solar storm will likewise be unharmed. If it were
> all neutrinos an average human would stop a grand total of maybe 10^-17 %
of
> that flux, which amounts to around 10^-7 electron volts - in other words,
> less than one interaction.
>
> Do I really need to write up a complete treatment of all the calculations
> here? It doesn't matter what exotic form you want the energy to arrive
in,
> because there simply isn't enough of it to do anything. The target
> civilization will be exposed to much higher levels of every type of
> radiation (including neutrinos) simply by living near their own sun.
I tend t oagree, but I've not done the calculations... I'd also, though, be
worried about secondary effects. E.g., if a local supernova increased the
heat influx on the surface of comets, thereby changing their orbits enough
to create a danger to us. Granted, this is far-fetched and, I bet, any
changes of this sort might cut it either way -- might put us out of danger
more than in danger.
Though, just intuitively, without doing any statistical orbits on this,
imagine the cometary bodies nearer the supernova (the the "windward" side of
the solar system) being push, ever so slightly toward the sun, changing more
of the orbits so that they might enter the inner solar system. This might
create a hazard that would play itself out over thousands of years.
Anyway, I'm not lying awake nights worrying about this...:)
Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/
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