Destroyer of worlds: Astronomers overlaid 11 time lapse images of the rotating star system WR 104 to reveal a 30 billion-kilometre-long tail that billows out in a spiral around it.
Credit: University of Sydney
SYDNEY: A spectacular, rotating binary star system is a ticking time bomb, ready to throw out a searing beam of high-energy gamma rays – and Earth may be right in the line of fire.
Astronomers at the University of Sydney, in Australia, first discovered the unusual and beguilingly beautiful star system eight years ago in the Constellation Sagittarius. One member of the pair is a highly unstable star known as a Wolf-Rayet, thought to be the final stage of stellar evolution to precede a cataclysmic supernova explosion.
"When it finally explodes as a supernova, it could emit an intense beam of gamma rays coming our way", said Peter Tuthill, lead researcher of the team that report their findings in the current Astrophysical Journal.
Vast and glowing plume
At a distance of 8,000 light-years from Earth, the pair of stars are a short hop away in galactic terms, and just one quarter of the way to the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.
The researchers took images of the system, known as WR 104, over a period of eight years using Hawaii's Keck Telescope. These images reveal a vast and glowing plume of heated dust and gas, billowing out in a spiral as the stars rotate once every eight months. This 'tail' is up to 30 billion kilometres long.
But something curious about the images caught the attention of the experts.
"Viewed from Earth, the rotating tail appears to be laid out on the sky in an almost perfect spiral. It could only appear like that if we are looking nearly exactly down on the axis of the binary system," said Tuthill.
This means we are peering down the barrel of the gun, as when binary supernovae go off, all their energy is focussed into a narrow beam of wildly destructive gamma ray radiation that emanates (both up and down) from the poles of the system.
"If such a gamma-ray burst happens, we really do not want Earth to be in the way," he said. "I used to appreciate this spiral just for its beautiful form, but now I can't help a twinge of feeling that it is uncannily like looking down a rifle barrel."
hahaha!
just sit back and, enjoy the ride.
love you don't die,
maddbull
like the article says...
like the article says... the only way we would see the spirils, is if we were directly in line with the star. and it is at least 8 times the size of our sun. And our sun is, what 35 earths?
and odds are the sun won't be in line with the star anyway.
also, if we're seeing this wr104 in the past, how would earth be seen from the stars view? I'd like to see how earth would look from 8,000 light years away. It might be seen as a dead planet already.
This thing could have went boom already. If thats the case, it's only a matter of time and probability.
or it could be a bunch of b.s. and we all die from a super-volcano eruption
The designer
HMMM, so let's see who designed all this fascinating stuff. We know it's there. There appears to be some type of order and sequence of events that are taking place. Who designed the sequence? Is it random? Did it just happen? Is it possible that there is some force behind all of this? If there is then does it follow that this force would have to have an intellect to think up the sequence? If there is this formless intellect then does it also have a will, by means of which, it brings these things, we are marveling at, into physical existence?