2012 Part 3 Rogue Planets, Gamma Ray Bursts

I thought I would finish my series I started on 2012 a while back. I'll look at solar objects catastrophically affecting the Earth's orbit/axis orientation and gamma ray bursts.

Our solar system is a rich mosaic of objects hurling around the sun in various orbits, all interacting with each other via gravity. The 2012 "theory" has postulated, among a great deal of other things that a rouge planet may enter the inner solar system and cause untold catastrophe. One name for this world is called Nibiru. Like most parts of this rough collections of ideas it lacks distinction and you will hear different descriptions of this heavenly body depending on who you talk to (or more likely, what website you read). I have heard it range from an undiscovered planet beyond Pluto to a "brown dwarf", a failed star.

There is evidence of mass extinctions happening every 25 million years or so, and some people have thrown out the idea that there may be a companion star that orbits around the Sun. This gravitational influence could perturb the orbits of comets and send them towards the inner solar system. There is nothing inherently implausible about this idea. Many star systems contain more than one star. The main problem is that we haven't seen it or observed evidence of it gravitationally. This rules out a bright star such as our sun but does leave the possibility of something called a brown dwarf. They are many times the mass of Jupiter but much smaller than the sun. They don't have the mass to increase the core temperature to support hydrogen fusion. They are very dim, mostly seen in the infrared (heat) part of the spectrum.

Such a large object would have a gravitational influence on other objects in the solar system. Researchers have constrained the orbit of planets to vast distances. We haven't observed them either directly or indirectly. I could go into a great deal more detail on this idea but suffice it to say there is no evidence of a large mass posing danger to the Earth.

Other more nonsensical ideas incorporate things like a planet swinging by and knocking the planet off axis. A flyby of a planet simply couldn't do it. It is wild speculation not bridled to things such as reality. It grossly misunderstands the mechanics of gravity. The only way a major shift in Earth's axis could happen would be if a large object of comparable size to the Earth collided with us. Needless to say a tilting axis would be the least of our problems.

Now lets step a few quadrillion kilometers away. It turns out that supernovae have an angrier cousin called gamma ray bursts. These are truly remarkable and devastating astronomical events, the largest explosions in the universe since the big bang. Most of them last only a few seconds but in this time they release more energy than our sun does during its entire 10 billion year life. Pause for a second to comprehend that.

So this sounds pretty scary, clearly an object with this amount of power could do tremendous damage to the Earth. In fact it may already have. Around 440 million years ago a gamma ray burst may have caused the Ordovician extinction where 70 percent of species were wiped out. Luckily for us we appear to be safe for at least thousands and probably millions of years.

In order for a gamma ray burst to threaten Earth a few things need to come into place. Either you need a massive star, around 100 solar masses rapidly rotating or binary neutron stars spiralling in towards each other. In the first case when the supernova occurs material begins to get pulled into the newly formed black hole. This forms a rapidly spinning accretion disk around it and jets of extremely energetic particles and radiation coming from the poles. This radiation is a gamma-ray burst. In the neutron star case a black hole forms from the two spinning neutron stars collide and the rest of the matter is pulled in not unlike the supermassive star collapse. This jet of radiation is emitted in a line similar to a laser (rough analogy). In order to be in danger you need to be directly in line with the jet. It is estimated that these events are dangerous up to a few thousand light years. Which is pretty far even in galactic terms.

Luckily for us our neighbourhood appears to be fairly safe for the time being. The closest star that may explode in this fashion is Eta Carinae at 7500 light years away. At around 100 solar masses it is certainly a candidate. Its rotational axis however is not pointed at the solar system and we appear to be safe from any ill effects. There is certainly no evidence that it will explode in three years. The current best estimates range from thousands to a few million years. We do not have the capability to predict supernovae with any reasonable accuracy.

In no way have I hit on everything that has been proposed on the 2012 theory. I just tried to go over a few of the ideas that were at least possible based on the laws of physics and show that we are not in any danger when 2012 rolls around. I would encourage anyone still curious to check out Universe Today, I have a link in my links section. They do a wonderful job of covering the ideas in more detail.

I will try to start blogging more regularly now after taking a few weeks off.

Scott

Meteors, Guitars, Trampolines, Wine and Whisky

After a summer full of utterly shitty weather we finally had a clear night. It was perfect timing. A bunch of my friends and I headed over to Ben's house and got ready to watch a cosmic marvel, the Perseids meteor shower. We headed outside at around 10:30PM and lay down on the trampoline. After covering ourselves with bug spray we looked up and saw some stunning shooting stars. Some of the most prominent ones occurred right as we got out there but they increased in frequency as the night progressed.

We sipped wine (and played finish the whiskey bottle) and stared at the stars jamming on the guitar for hours. I learned two things that night meteor showers are really cool, and the tune of "La Bamba" goes well with just about any lyrics you can throw out there.

Meteor showers happen when the Earth's orbit takes us through the debris left from a comet. In this case the comet was Swift-Tuttle. Comets are effectively dirty snowballs that orbit happily beyond the orbit of Neptune in either the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud until some sort of gravitational disturbance knocks it towards the inner solar system. It will either orbit the Sun in a highly elliptical path or get tossed out of the solar system. The Sun heats up the object and the solar wind, the particles that get ejected from the sun, cause the distinctive tail to form. This tail spews out small particles which are left in the wake. When the particles enter the Earth's atmosphere friction causes them to burn up, producing shooting stars.

Thats all for today off to go camping for the weekend.

Large Hadron Collider Hopefully Starting at Christmas, Physicists preparing for Hardons

As many people have heard, at least in passing, the Large Hadron Collider was supposed to come online last September. Numerous technical problems have caused delays which I will go into shortly but first I thought I would address the actual purpose of this utterly huge machine and some of its popular misconceptions.

Particle accelerators are the microscopes of particle physics. Using something extremely big they can peer into the very small. We have been building larger and larger accelerators for decades each with higher energies, meaning they smash stuff together faster, than the previous ones. The simplified idea of particle accelerators relies on Einstein's very famous equation E=mc^2. It basically states that energy and mass are equivalent with a constant, c^2. What these accelerators do is increase the kinetic energy via magnetic fields and smash them together inside of a detector. These particles are going only tiny fractions of a percent slower than the speed of light and this translates into tremendous energy. This energy can then "freeze out" into new particles when it collides and the speed reaches zero. The energy has to go somewhere and nature converts it into mass in the form of exotic particles. A rough analogy (it doesn't really happen in the macroscopic world) would be two cars speeding towards each other on the highway. When they collide new "particles" are created in the form of tangled metal and other pieces of debris.

Scientists then look at these particles and their decay products in the detectors. They are able to measure their charge, mass and other properties. With this information they retrace the steps of these particles and hopefully discover new ones. This is how quarks and hundreds of other particles were discovered. Going back to our analogy it is like a mechanic trying to discover how to construct a Bentley by smashing them into walls at 200km/hr and looking at the debris.

We need to build more powerful, and therefore bigger machines because the particles we are looking for have successively greater masses. The holy grail of the LHC is to find a particle called the Higgs Boson. The math of particle physicists predict that this will be the particle that gives every other particle mass. It is a rather alien concept like most of quantum physics but here is another rough analogy. The Higgs Bosons are theorized to form something called a Higgs Field. When all the particles that have mass; electrons, protons, neutrons etc. pass through this field they are affected by it. The field permeates all of space-time, ie. everywhere you can dream of. The Higgs Field is similar to molasses, when you put a spoon into it and try to stir it you encounter resistance. This resistance can be roughly thought of as mass. Scientists' theories predict that the Higgs will be found at energy levels achievable by the LHC. If we look hard enough at the data they believe we should be able to see evidence of this elusive particle.

It is extremely important to note that this is just a hypothesis based on a sound and robust theory. There is zero physical evidence that it actually exists as of yet. All the other particles that the same theory (The Standard Model) predicted have turned out to be real and observable so it has some rather strong proponents but until evidence is delivered it will remain up in the air. Some of the most awesome discoveries could come if the Higgs was shown to be non-existant, opening the possibility of a myriad of other exotic theories such as String Theory or multi-dimensional space.

It is beyond the scope of this post to go into depth of other possibilities but if your curious I recommend checking out wikipedia and other resources.

This massive machine located on the border of France and Switzerland starting test firing particles in September, but not colliding them. The experiment is absolutely massive, located 100m underground with a circumference of 27km. A truly international project that had former and current enemies such as Iran and Israel cooperating on the project. It is an engineering marvel that is a testament to what our civilization can do if we decide to stop blowing the shit out of each other for a few years.

1. LHC superimposed onto the Switzerland/France Border

With any major newsworthy event the crackpots start filtering out of the woodwork. Individuals such as Walter Wagner seem to have a propensity for making end of the world claims whenever a particle accelerator is about to come online. The main ideas they put forth include microscopic black holes consuming the earth as well as more exotic theories such as a strange matter cascade in which the earth gets consumed into a tiny ball of strange matter. All of these claims are baseless on both theory as well as experiment. High energy cosmic rays with energies orders of magnitude higher from supernovae and other stellar events have been bombarding the earth for billions of years with no ill effects. It is also ludicrous from a theoretical point of view. Microscopic black holes may be created however the exact same theory that predicts then also says that they will evaporate in a tiny fraction of a second. Existing for times many orders of magnitude too short to cause any harm. Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants people are leapfrogging, getting scientific sounding theories when they are in fact based on nothing but misunderstanding and scaremongering.

If anyone out there actually has new data or a new theory these physicists would love to hear from you. They don't want to destroy the world either. They have families, loved ones and a passion for finding things out. But if you keep making nonsensible claims to some of the smartest people on earth they will continue to ignore you and proceed with real, worthwhile experiments and worthwhile concerns about safety.

Now on to the problem and the hopeful solution. Particle accelerators use magnetic fields to control the path of the particles which they eventually smash together. In order to cause a magnetic field a current must be passed through a conductor. Conductors have this annoying property caused resistance which generates heat as a current flows through the wire. They only allow a certain amount of current to pass before they start to heat up and eventually melt. This is what causes electrical fires in homes and cars. This left physicists with a problem, the magnetic field strength they needed could not be achieved with ordinary materials, they would instantly melt. In order to build these extremely large machines they needed to use something without the constraints of resistance, which led us to superconductors. A superconducting material's resistance drops to zero when it is cooled below a critical temperature allowing massive currents and generating large magnetic fields. Liquid helium is only four degrees above absolute zero, cold enough for metal to become superconducting, making the LHC possible.

Unfortunately the sharp drop in resistance also occurs in the other direction, causing the material to no longer be superconducting when it is heated. An electrical fault caused the helium to leak, the metal heated up, the coil "quenched", losing its superconductivity and generated large amounts of heat damaging the equipment. CERN then had to warm up the surrounding sections very slowly to save the expensive helium and reduce damage due to thermal stresses. Magnets were replaced and additional testing equipment has been installed to better monitor and prevent such an event from happening again. Slowly but surely the engineers and scientists are working out the problems. They are dealing with the most complicated machine ever constructed by humanity some setbacks are bound to happen. The latest press release from CERN hopes to have the experiment operating by Christmas of this year. More delays may be incoming but I for one am excited to see what this feat of human ingenuity can do and where it will lead us.

Scott

What Would Richard Feynman Do

Much better than Jesus.

Obama Birther

If you are looking for your daily dose of stupid look no farther. Michelle Bachmann is a Republican congresswomen from Minnesota. She recently moved to delay a resolution honouring Hawaii's 50th anniversary as a state that mentioned it as Obama's birthplace. She used a technicality that a quorum was not present, the minimum number of people required to pass the vote.

Here is the video.


No one ever objects to it on this grounds. They are always small meaningless resolutions. It sounds to me like she is giving credit to the Obama "birthers" who claim that Obama was born outside of the USA. This is a demonstrably false proposition. His records were analysed, his birth certificate was reviewed etc etc. I also fail to see how this has any benefit whatsoever to the Republican cause. If she actually believes that John McCain's campaign full of leading Republicans was so incompetent to not realize this and WIN THE ELECTION FOR HIM she is seriously destroying the credibility of her party. She is probably just pandering to ignorant constituents but this is not the first time she poured on the stupid in the House of Representatives.

She gave a speech opposing the Cap and Trade system of CO2. Fine, you don't have to believe that is the best way to solve our climate crisis. Her arguments supporting her position were so incredibly ignorant it appeared to be satire. I'd recommend watching the video:



She begins and ends a global warming denial spree with a complete non-sequitor. Her main point was that it was a natural product of nature. Which is true. It is required for life. Her inane ramblings then slide into talking about flying birds and lies. She claims, "There is not one study that claims CO2 is a harmful gas". Actually there are hundreds that claim, in too high of quantities, CO2 can be devastating to the ecosystem of a planet. Take a look at Venus, it is hotter than Mercury because of greenhouse gases.

She then seriously messes up her facts claiming that CO2 constitutes 3% of our atmosphere. It is actually much less than that around 0.04%. However her unstated false premise is that "3%" is not going to radically change the climate. She doesn't show any evidence that this is the case. If our atmosphere was 3% CO2 our oceans would have boiled away and we would be a world utterly devoid of life.

Her other major error is the naturalistic fallacy, "If its natural it must not be harmful". Well congresswomen I have a proposition for you. Next time you have a salad replace 3% of your lettuce with natural nightshade leaves and berries. Then replace 0.04% of your salad dressing with arsenic, which is as natural as it gets. Let me know how that turns out for you.

Her arguments were so devoid of scientific literacy it was scary. The entire speech was so terrible I was cringing. I'm sure you can point out more errors in her logic I just couldn't handle it anymore. I don't expect politicians to be experts in science. I do expect politicians to educate themselves with experts and make opinions based on the scientific consensus. Canada doesn't have much to brag about either. Our Prime Minister has shown a lack of dedication towards combating global warming and was fairly recently a denier. I hope he has actually had a change of heart, which is fine, I was somewhat skeptical until I read more about it and became educated on the consensus. He also appointed a creationist as a Science Minister but that is a different topic.

I sincerely hope we begin to see a shift in scientific literacy in politics but I'm not counting on it.

EDIT: For clarity and misused words.

Funny Youtube Video

I came across this from Bad Astronomy and thought I would share it. Ridicule can be the best medicine.

2012 Pt. 2 - Death from Supernova

Here is the second part of what will probably be a several post expose on the 2012 "theory". I will focus on one or two events and go into some depth in each of them. Hopefully some interesting knowledge will be picked up instead of just debunking silly claims. Try googling 2012. You will find information about the movie that is coming out shortly as well as some remarkably irrational and intellectually lazy websites such as Survive 2012 among the thousands of hits that get returned. Herein lies a problem. If you accept ideas you read from a search engine query without skepticism it is easy to get drawn into a clusterfuck of poorly researched websites that belong in the fiction section of the internet.

On the front page of the aforementioned website it states "There is zero scientific evidence that anything will happen in 2012...", OK good start. Then the devolve into hypothesizing about random armageddon events that lack any causal relationship whatsoever with the Mayan calendar date of 13.00.00.00. I will go over the space based events in this post and show that there is no evidence that any of them pose a threat on December 21st, 2012.

I will try to make this informative not just relating to 2012 but also in ways that the universe just may kill us in the future. The Cosmos can be a rather nasty place. Stellar events, radiation, explosions that make Hiroshima look like a firecracker, comets and asteroids hurdling by at many kilometers per second among many others have the potential to wipe out life as we know it on the planet earth. This will be very brief and I would recommend checking out Phil Plait's book Death from the Skies if you want more information on the topic. I haven't read it yet but I hear it is excellent.

The one I hear often is "Galactic Alignment". They postulate that the Earth, the Sun, and the Centre of the Milky Way will all be aligned on this winter solstice. The theories are rather convoluted and i encourage you to read more about it if you are curious but the end result is that nothing will happen. The Milky Way is around 7000 light years thick. The orbit of our solar system does slowly shift "up and down" as we happily orbit the center. This process takes millions of years. It is all a continuous process there is no dates where we can say that we are exactly in the middle because it is all rather fuzzy. Most of the other arguments that are made are taken from astrology. As soon as you see that you may as well stop reading. The most compelling, cogent argument needs to be tossed out if the premise in which it was based on is blatantly false such as astrology. If you want to read your horoscope for entertainment fine, not my business, but predicting the "End of Days" on it is just ridiculous.

The next one I will look at is the supernova. These are real and have the potential to kill us if we were within a specific radius. Luckily for us we know how supernovae happen and we are far enough away from potential candidate stars to be safe. These events happen at the end of a star's life. There are two main types of supernovae, they are designated type 1A and type 2. Type 2 supernovae occur when a massive star, several times the mass of our sun to around a hundred times the mass, to run out of fuel and explode.

Stars are a delicate balance of gravity and radiation pressure which I will get to in a moment. If you have ever dove into a pool or river deeper than 8 feet you will notice that as you descend you begin to notice the pressure on your ear drums. Now imagine a star it is REALLY big. It has tremendous gravity and therefore a great deal of pressure and 'pull' towards the centre. This pressure causes the star to heat up, increasing the speed that the atoms are banging into one and other until eventually they hit each other hard enough that they stick together. It is called nuclear fusion, which generates more energy than it consumes. You can picture it as climbing a roller-coaster where the drop at the end is longer than the hill approaching it. You need energy to climb the hill but once you get to the top you will exit with more speed than you started with. This energy is given off in the form of light. This light actually exerts a force, just like pushing against a wall in your home. Gravity however hasn't disappeared. Gravity wants the star to collapse into a single point since it is always attractive. Therefore this radiation pressure and gravity are locked in a delicate balance for the duration of the star's life.

The fun begins when it runs out of fuel, like a gambler sitting at a blackjack table who eventually runs out of chips (or my friends who bet stupidly large amounts of money on single hands of war). Gravity begins to win out. The radiation pressure simply isn't enough and it begins to collapse. During this collapse the gravitational potential energy heats of the material in the star and causes it to explode in a spectacular fashion. This explosions created all of the elements heavier than iron that we see today on the planet Earth. If a planet is within approximately 100 light years the energy released can be enough to do serious harm to a planet such as earth. Fortunately there are no nearby stars that are in danger of going supernova in the near future. The most likely candidate is Eta Carinae. It is a massive star approximately 9000 light years away. It could explode tomorrow or in 100,000 years. Astronomers do not know. Luckily we will just be treated to a spectacular light show in the sky, not armageddon.

The second type of supernova is called type 1A. This can occur in binary systems with stars similar to the mass of our sun. Smaller stars don't have this violent end. They slow enlarge as they age. Our sun will have a radius extending out past the orbit of Venus and possibly past Earth. Regardless we will be nicely toasted. It then sheds off its outer atmosphere and becomes a planetary nebula leaving behind a corpse, a white dwarf star. It no longer produces energy and will be approximately the size of the Earth slowly radiating away its heat and eventually cooling into a dead cinder. The density of this star will be mind boggling, approximately 1 metric tonne per cubic centimeter. That is similar to a freight train cargo container in a teaspoon. It is made out of electron-degenerate matter, I will leave it up to you to read up on that if you are interested.

If the white dwarf has a partner, which many do, matter can begin falling onto the corpse of the star. It happily builds up in an accretion disk around the star from matter being sucked in from its companion. It will continue to do this until it reaches a limit where gravity again becomes the enemy. At 1.38 stellar masses the pull of gravity is able to overcome the degeneracy pressure and cause a supernova. The star collapses and rebounds expelling tremendous amounts of energy and disappears in a cloud of energy and heavy elements.

So there you have it, galactic alignment is a hoax, and supernovae while real and amazingly cool are not close enough to hurt us. We can see the stars in our immediate neighbourhood and we don't have white dwarf binary systems accumulating matter or supergiants ready to collapse. Next time I'll look at 'rouge' planets, asteroids and gamma ray bursts.

Scott