Huh? Who said anything about nuclear explosions?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

That's our normal basis of familiarity with gamma rays. In other words, gamma rays don't cause particle cascades.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Just wondering, but can merging threads create gamma ray bursts?

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As above, so below

Interesting question. The angular estimates for a GRB "killer beam" would have an opening angle of perhaps 0.2 radians, so that means the line of danger across the beam at our distance is 1-2 kly. So I don't think the Sun would "leave" the beam in 10-100 thousand years, the issue would instead be if it were in the beam at all. The Sun has only about a half a percent chance of being in the beam of any given GRB, if the opening angle is indeed 0.2 radians.

But WR104 is known to angle generally toward us, so for that system the chances must be a lot higher, maybe in the ballpark of 50/50. So that's the first thing that must be determined. If we're sure we're in the beam direction, and we're sure a GRB would present a danger to life, then we'd be looking at roughly a 1/100,000 chance every year. That's probably comparable to killer asteroid chances (not of widespread extinction, but of a significant environmental threat). So I don't have a good handle on the uncertainties or the threat to Earth of a GRB, but it certainly seems possible that WR104 by itself poses as significant a threat over the next 10-100,000 years as do near-Earth asteroids. I'm not losing sleep over either, but they are both worthy of keeping in mind and monitoring. One should not cry "sensationalized" for this report, but then track issues like will Apophis cause widespread loss of life.

Yes I agree... there are definite limits to our individual and collective 'lifetimes', for a whole bunch of reasons, while we are all bunched in one cradle.

The problem with getting folk to see, and react to, future danger is that the beastie is not built that way. Drunks lay down on the road... there is no car coming 'now'. Economies plough ahead with inefficiencies since 'we haven't seen any indisputable proof of global climate change'. I, and millions of other aussies walk around without sunscreen on... It seems that the danger has to be imminent, highly visible, and _understandable_ before we act.

Good luck trying to get a grb onto the public radar....

The small, brief amounts of gamma rays produced by a nuclear explosion don't. Because the matter affected is already being broken down by heat and then dispersed. A GRB is a different scenario.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Huh? Do you have any evidence that gamma rays cause particle cascades?

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

I don't know whether they do or not, I suspect they might at high enough energy density. But saying they definitely can't, based only on the fact that nuclear explosions don't produce them, is definitely not good science.

The exact effects will depend on how much of the GRB's energy hits us, and what types of particles and radiations it produces-- more than just pure gamma, IIRC.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I never said that I was basing it on nuclear explosions, just that such are physical evidence of similar processes. Hmm, but now that you mention it, why would that be bad science, it's real evidence, as opposed to the hand-waving you tossed around.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

It's bad science because it compares two unlike conditions.

And I offered no handwaving, I said that I didn't know whether it would happen or not. How is that handwaving?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

If you don't like being wrong, perhaps you can look things up before you post them.

__________________
"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

So you have evidence of what would actually happen to Earth under a GRB, and it says that I'm wrong, do you? How did you gather this evidence?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

GRB's no. Gamma Rays, yes.

I wrote: Why would the envelope need to be rad protection? The only radiation that would threaten it would be solar UV. The atmosphere would absorb the gamma rays and any subsequent x-rays.

Then you wrote: And then re-release the absorbed energy as particle showers.

Your claim was that Gamma rays cause particle showers. Can you support your assertion or not?

__________________
"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

I've pointed out already that this was an opinion, not an assertion. To repeat:
Is there any part of that statement you need explained? Because you just don't seem to be getting its meaning.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

...an opinion

LOL

I'll leave it at that.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

What's funny?

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Is that what I actually said? Better get those reading glasses checked. You're adding things I didn't write.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

It turns out that it's hard to get a GRB in this galaxy unless you have a tight binary system, and WR104 is probably not tight enough. The reason is, Wolf-Rayet stars (one of the stars in WR 104, ergo the "WR") lose a lot of mass before they go supernova, and that mass should carry away a lot of angular momentum. That would slow the rotation, and rotation is a very important part of the prevailing "collapsar" model of long-term GRBs. So WR 104 might not threaten us after all, even if we are directly "over" it.