Friday 03/November/2023 – 02:40 PM
Scientists have found that violent collisions between stars, called kilonovas, could destroy our planet due to the deadly flow of radiation, namely gamma rays, cosmic rays and X-rays, emitted by the space explosion.
A space explosion could end life on Earth for 1000 years
Hayley Perkins, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told Space.com: We found that if a neutron star merged about 36 light-years from Earth, the radiation from the space explosion could cause a near-extinction event for humanity on Earth.
A space explosion could end life on Earth for 1000 years
He continued: A powerful collision between ultra-dense neutron stars will lead to a particle explosion that will destroy the ozone layer on our planet and make it vulnerable to ultraviolet radiation over the next thousand years.
Perkins emphasized that the exact safe distance and the most dangerous components are uncertain, because many effects depend on characteristics such as the angle of view of the event, the energy of the explosion, and the mass of ejected materials.
A space explosion could end life on Earth for 1000 years
The researchers determined that cosmic rays are the most important concern, and a collision between stars would precipitate an expanding bubble of cosmic rays that would envelop everything in its path, and would cause high-energy charged waves to fall to Earth.
The researchers believe that this explosion could ignite any celestial planet or body in its direct path for an estimated period of 297 light-years. However, even the indirect passage of gamma rays could be enough to significantly dissolve the ozone and require about four years to fix it.
Worse still, collisions of gamma rays with surrounding interstellar dust can lead to X-ray emissions that have the same serious effect on our planet’s ozone layer, and these effects last longer than the effects of gamma rays, which may be more deadly.
