What do you take away from this?

[Archon_Wing]

They should really rename Uranus.

That and, I'm glad my planet has water. But it is crazy to think that Earth is just a tiny little speck on the universe. I find it fun that there is just seemingly no end to things that we could potentially learn about the universe.

[pvn]

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VY Canis Majoris This star is likely to undergo a hypernova stage by 3200. The distance from Earth to VY CMa is about 1.5 kiloparsecs (or 5,000 light-years).

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Wait, what? time to start running...

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Uh, yeah. How can something like that be predicted with that level of granularity? 1200 years in a star life cycle is a flash in the pan; wouldn't this be like predicting the time, down to the second, at which I will die?

And assumuing that this 1200 year span is subject to huge error, it's almost certainly possible that this thing has already blowed up 4,999 years ago and we're going to find out Real Soon. Is 5,000 light years far enough away to avoid getting seriously [censored] up from this?

[hitch1978]

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VY Canis Majoris This star is likely to undergo a hypernova stage by 3200. The distance from Earth to VY CMa is about 1.5 kiloparsecs (or 5,000 light-years).

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Wait, what? time to start running...

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Uh, yeah. How can something like that be predicted with that level of granularity? 1200 years in a star life cycle is a flash in the pan; wouldn't this be like predicting the time, down to the second, at which I will die?


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To use your own methodology, I would think that most competent doctors (With the correct instruments) could detect the second you were going to die, if it was only one second away.

If we could slow down time so that doctors had years to analise the information your body was giving off one second before you died, I suspect it would be trivially easy for them.

[Siegmund]

I would guess that the "before 3200" bit is based on something like a theoretical result that says the current stage of Canis Majoris's life-cycle is normally several hundred to a few thousand years long, and on this basis they can assign some probability to its explosion in the near future. The cutoff at 3200 is presumably someone's assertion that 1200 years is the mean or median time left for the star, according to somebody's model.

[Jamougha]

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VY Canis Majoris This star is likely to undergo a hypernova stage by 3200. The distance from Earth to VY CMa is about 1.5 kiloparsecs (or 5,000 light-years).

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Wait, what? time to start running...

[/ QUOTE ]

Uh, yeah. How can something like that be predicted with that level of granularity? 1200 years in a star life cycle is a flash in the pan; wouldn't this be like predicting the time, down to the second, at which I will die?

And assumuing that this 1200 year span is subject to huge error, it's almost certainly possible that this thing has already blowed up 4,999 years ago and we're going to find out Real Soon. Is 5,000 light years far enough away to avoid getting seriously [censored] up from this?

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From what I can find, it appears that it has entered it's final phase of life and that's thought to last roughly that long. Bear in mind that that's an observer-date, so if it's correct then it means the star blew up 3,800 years ago and we will see the results in 3200AD. There is bound to be a large margin for error here, yes.

This analyses the potential effects of a nearby supernova explosion, but a hypernova is much more luminous than a supernova. Looks like it will kill you quite easily without any shielding. Fortunately we have about 10 tonnes/m^2 of atmosphere above us, which is pretty decent as radiation shields go. This thing is way to close for comfort, though.

[surftheiop]

Either we run really good or the deck is rigged

[surftheiop]

Its pretty sick that so few atoms (our brain) can comprehend so many atoms.

I know this probaly doesnt make sense but i just think its nuts how small our brain is yet it is aware of so much

[Nielsio]

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Either we run really good or the deck is rigged

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lololol

[im a model]

i learned that we has a moon

[Justin A]

This makes me feel very small.