Exploding Star May Have Damaged Life on Earth 239
Reedo writes "Scientists have proposed that an ancient supernova may have damaged our ozone layer, wreaking havok on terrestrial life. Previously no one had realized that a cluster of stars could have been so close to the earth during that time. But don't worry about it happening again anytime soon. The next expected supernova is nearly 500,000 light-years away and is too far from the earth to cause any damage."
Inane (Score:2, Insightful)
It's preposterous to think that there could have been even ONE supernova in our vicinity (let alone "several" as stated in the article) without obvious lingering effects, i.e., a remnant special star like a neutron star or a black hole and/or some sort of nebula. "Several million years" is nothing in cosmic time--the nebulae that those stars would have left would barely have dispersed at all.
Not to mention that our position in the galaxy is somewhat peculiar. We are on the rim of a huge and empty vastness called the local bubble. The speculation (since there's a pulsar on the other side of the local bubble) is that the portion of space near us was cleared out by a big supernova some time ago (probably ~5-6 billion years ago, as our sun was almost certainly formed in its wake). How could these researchers possibly think that several supernova could have passed through without leaving similarly obvious signatures?
Re:Effect on evolution? (Score:1, Insightful)
Not Inane (Score:2, Insightful)
I doubt CNN made this story out of full cloth, I'm sure the theory has more to back it up than CNN reported - it's not like CNN is a scientific journal, they always trim corroborating details.
(Frankly, I think it's absurd that this comment was moderated to the top.)