what would a gamma ray burst 1,500 light years away, going towards the earth, do to it?

Question

what exactly would happen to life on earth if a gamma ray struck the earth from 1,500 light years away?

would the molecules of living organisms be torn apart? if yes, how would that occur? why would it occur?

would molecules that make up breathable air and water also break apart? if that happened, what would happen to the earth as we know it?

okay, so the gamma ray burst would suddenly hit only one side of the planet. what happens then to the living things and elements of the earth on its other side?

why have i heard that a gamma ray burst is the most dangerous natural disaster that could adversely affect life on this planet?

what happens to the entire solar system? would a gamma ray, once it hit our planet, then "disburse" its forces outside of our atmosphere? if yes, to where and to what extent?

Answer 1

1) Scorched earth. Like the sun going supernova but just from further away.

2) the high energy particles would collide with genetic material stopping cellular division. No healing + No growth = Death

3) A gamma ray burst would boil off the oceans in seconds on one side. heat in the earths atmosphere doesn't just hang around where it got hot. it moves to where it's cooler.

Experiment: ignite one half of a ball of gunpowder.

4) Be case it's total inhalation of all life on the planet and it's utterly unstoppable. period.

5)It's a wave. An Expanding sphere. At the same moment that it hit's the earth it hit's a planet 3000 light years away on the other side of the burst. Jupiter gets hit. Mars. Venus. Betelgeuse. Pluto. Deros. Titan... All of them. and everything within the blast radius. It' not an Earth level event or a system level event it's a galactic level event.

Answer 2

"So, please help me out! If this star did explode and eject gamma-ray bursts at earth, how would we be affected?" That far away, unless it was all directed at us, probably little effect. 'If the ozone layer got damaged, would that mean more of the suns rays and heat would hit the surface?" Ionizing radiation makes ozone. More ionizing radiation makes more ozone. The ozone layer will get thicker. If there is more energy than the ozone layer can stop, the upper troposphere will be turned into an evil, thick, brown, opaque, toxic cloud. *That* might be the end of of us. "Would the gamma-ray burst completely scorch one side of the earth, and destroy the ozone layer on that side, killing everything?" Unlikely from that distance. A few hundred light years, maybe. "Or is it too far away to do such damage?" I think so. "Would it damage/destroy satellites, causing T.V, radio and other forms of communication on earth to stop working? No, probably not. The stuff in space gets pretty bathed as it is now. We'd probably just lose a couple of older satellites. Maybe Hubble too. "Would the 10 second flash blind people, or burn them?" No, probably not. Not from that distance. We are usually pretty good about blinking and looking away...

Answer 3

Was watching a show on The History Channel about this last night. What the goal is for humanity in the future with better technology is to build a shield. Yes, you heard me right, a shield just like in the Star Wars movies. It is a plasma shield but cold plasma. Think of it as a dome such as in the futuristic envisionment of domed cities, like in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century a few decades ago. What this shield, or dome if you will, does is protects the environment inside from deadly gamma ray bursts, a red giant sun, and so on. When everything outside the dome is molten lava at 5,000 degrees or what have you, inside the shield everything is hunky dory. We can not build such shields as of yet, but give us a few thousand years.

Answer 4

You seem to have some good answers to your question.
I think the most important consideration would be the burst duration.
The actual size of the source determines how long it will last.
A neutron star disintegration would last for less than a hundred thousands of a second and would probably not be detectable by our instruments.
A sun like ours would last for seconds.
A compressed galaxy could produce a burst the could last for many seconds or minutes.
the duration depends on the length of time it takes a light beam to span the diameter of the disintegrating object.
The duration and distance would determine how lethal it would be to us.

Answer 5

"A scientific paper describing this finding appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The lead author is Brian Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate at University of Kansas whom Melott advises.
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known. Most originate in distant galaxies, and a large percentage likely arise from explosions of stars over 15 times more massive than our Sun. A burst creates two oppositely-directed beams of gamma rays that race off into space.
Thomas says that a gamma-ray burst may have caused the Ordovician extinction 450 million years ago, killing 60 percent of all marine invertebrates. Life was largely confined to the sea, although there is evidence of primitive land plants during this period.
In the new work, the team used detailed computer models to calculate the effects of a nearby gamma-ray burst on the atmosphere and the consequences for life.
Thomas, with Dr. Charles Jackman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., calculated the effect of a nearby gamma-ray burst on the Earth's atmosphere. Gamma rays, a high-energy form of light, can break molecular nitrogen (N2) into nitrogen atoms, which react with molecular oxygen (O2) to form nitric oxide (NO). NO will destroy ozone (O3) and produce nitrogen dioxide (NO2). NO2 will then react with atomic oxygen to reform NO. More NO means more ozone destruction. Computer models show that up to half the ozone layer is destroyed within weeks. Five years on, at least 10 percent is still destroyed.
Next Thomas and fellow student Daniel Hogan, an undergraduate, calculated the effect of ultraviolet radiation on life. Deep-sea creatures living several feet below water would be protected. Surface-dwelling plankton and other life near the surface, however, would not survive. Plankton is the foundation of the marine food chain.....regions of the planet most susceptible to DNA damage (shown in red) if a large gamma ray burst were to occur close to Earth. Though there is no direct evidence, scientists say a nearby gamma-ray burst may have caused the great extinction of the late Ordovician period 450 million years ago, which killed 60 percent of all marine invertebrates. Credit: NASA/U. of Kansas Click here for a 2 meg print-resolution version of this image
Dr. Bruce Lieberman, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas, originated the idea that a gamma-ray burst specifically could have caused the great Ordovician extinction, 200 million years before the dinosaurs. An ice age is thought to have caused this extinction. But a gamma-ray burst could have caused a fast die-out early on and also could have triggered the significant drop in surface temperature on Earth.
"One unknown variable is the rate of local gamma-ray bursts," said Thomas. "The bursts we detect today originated far away billions of years ago, before the Earth formed. Among the billions of stars in our Galaxy, there's a good chance that a massive one relatively nearby exploded and sent gamma rays our way." The Swift mission, launched in November 2004, will help determine recent burst rates. Other team members are Dr. Claude Laird of the University of Kansas, and Drs. Richard Stolarski, John Cannizzo, and Neil Gehrels of NASA Goddard.
Swift is a first-of-its-kind multi-wavelength observatory dedicated to the study of gamma ray burst (GRB) science. Its three instruments will work together to observe GRBs and afterglows in the gamma ray, X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical wavebands. Swift is designed to solve the 35-year-old mystery of the origin of gamma-ray bursts. Scientists believe GRB are the birth cries of black holes."

Related Links:

Swift mission

Gamma-ray Bursts

Gamma-ray Astronomy


Christopher Wanjek
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Answer 6

itd probably burn up our atmosphere and we'd get a horrible sun burn like rash and eventually die leave the only thing living on earth tiny little organisms deep in the earth

Answer 7

Our atmosphere protects us from cosmic rays.