It’s a death star, but that’s life
How’s this for a science (non)fiction movie synopsis; two stars, closely orbiting each other, 8000 light years from Earth, pose a direct threat to life on this planet should one of them explode.
Eight years ago Dr Tuthill’s team, using Hawaii’s huge Keck telescope, discovered that one of the objects is a highly unstable beast called a Wolf-Rayet star. They inevitably die in huge explosions that may sometimes produce deadly gamma ray bursts. Now Dr Tuthill’s team has made another discovery. Overlapping 11 time-lapse images of the 30 billion-kilometre-long gas spiral, they have concluded that Earth is almost directly above one pole of the doomed star, dubbed WR 104. When Wolf-Rayet stars explode, much of their energy is blasted from the poles. “From our vantage point,” said Dr Tuthill, “we are looking right down the gun barrel. That’s what’s got us worried.”
Gamma ray bursts from a “nearby” star caused a mass extinction on Earth 443 million years ago, so the prospect certainly isn’t something to be taken lightly.
Suggestions Spock?
