Watch Black holes can actually-destroy us from light-years left
The space is a beautiful, awe-inspiring place... until you remember that the majority things in it could finish life on Earth. A rogue asteroid, the death of our Sun, and, yep, still a black hole light-years away could easily put an finish to life as we recognize it on our little rocky planet.
As the newest episode of Kurzgesagt explains, black holes can blast out very great pulses of energy called gamma-ray bursts - or "death from space", as they like to call them - anytime, anywhere, and we presently have to hope we're not in the dismissal line when it happens.
Gamma rays are electromagnetic waves that carry energy, presently like visible light. Except unlike light, they're much, much extra powerful. A single gamma ray photon is extra energetic than 1 million visible light photons joint, and is capable of disrupting our DNA.
Thankfully, on Earth, we're protected from the majority gamma rays in space by our lovely ozone. But that's only normal gamma rays... gamma-ray bursts, on the other hand, are a great deal more powerful.
You can think about the bursts like meeting the energy from each star within 100 million light-years - so, sucking the energy from thousands of galaxies, every with billions of stars - and then intent all of that power into a lone laser. That's what a gamma-ray burst is like.
There are 2- types of gamma-ray bursts that were recognize about - short and long ones. The extended ones previous about a minute and are thought to create from the collapse of a supernova into a black hole. The short ones previous only a second, and scientists think they occur when 2- binary stars merge together to form a black hole.
Both of these scenarios finish the same way, though, with a black hole that's surrounded by a magnetised disk of gas left in excess of from its parent star (or stars).
And, as the video above explains, the turning round of that black hole winds up the magnetic meadow, which funnels hot jet of particles travelling at nearly the speed of light.
The gas inside this funnel creates two very focussed jets of gamma rays that erupt absent of the black hole like a laser gun.
These gamma-ray bursts are occurring every one over the Universe all the time - we detect approximately one per day on standard with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. But as far as we know, we've never had one point right at us in our cosmic neighbourhood.
Which is superior, because if that happened within still a few thousand light-years, a gamma-ray burst would be able to strip our ozone layer gone completely, leave the planet - and most complex life - scorched by the Sun's radiation. You require to watch the video above to see that in action.
In fact, that destructive authority is the reason that a lot of scientists think we haven't yet seen signs of extraterrestrial life wherever in the Universe - gamma-ray bursts power be wiping out huge chunks of it regularly.
Most terrifying of all, considering as gamma-ray bursts travel at the speed of light, one could be title towards us right now, and we'd not at all have any warning until it hits us & kills us all. So if you weren't previously walking around worrying about your imminent demise, well, currently you can.
As the newest episode of Kurzgesagt explains, black holes can blast out very great pulses of energy called gamma-ray bursts - or "death from space", as they like to call them - anytime, anywhere, and we presently have to hope we're not in the dismissal line when it happens.
Gamma rays are electromagnetic waves that carry energy, presently like visible light. Except unlike light, they're much, much extra powerful. A single gamma ray photon is extra energetic than 1 million visible light photons joint, and is capable of disrupting our DNA.
Thankfully, on Earth, we're protected from the majority gamma rays in space by our lovely ozone. But that's only normal gamma rays... gamma-ray bursts, on the other hand, are a great deal more powerful.
You can think about the bursts like meeting the energy from each star within 100 million light-years - so, sucking the energy from thousands of galaxies, every with billions of stars - and then intent all of that power into a lone laser. That's what a gamma-ray burst is like.
There are 2- types of gamma-ray bursts that were recognize about - short and long ones. The extended ones previous about a minute and are thought to create from the collapse of a supernova into a black hole. The short ones previous only a second, and scientists think they occur when 2- binary stars merge together to form a black hole.
Both of these scenarios finish the same way, though, with a black hole that's surrounded by a magnetised disk of gas left in excess of from its parent star (or stars).
And, as the video above explains, the turning round of that black hole winds up the magnetic meadow, which funnels hot jet of particles travelling at nearly the speed of light.
The gas inside this funnel creates two very focussed jets of gamma rays that erupt absent of the black hole like a laser gun.
These gamma-ray bursts are occurring every one over the Universe all the time - we detect approximately one per day on standard with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. But as far as we know, we've never had one point right at us in our cosmic neighbourhood.
Which is superior, because if that happened within still a few thousand light-years, a gamma-ray burst would be able to strip our ozone layer gone completely, leave the planet - and most complex life - scorched by the Sun's radiation. You require to watch the video above to see that in action.
In fact, that destructive authority is the reason that a lot of scientists think we haven't yet seen signs of extraterrestrial life wherever in the Universe - gamma-ray bursts power be wiping out huge chunks of it regularly.
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