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How star blasts forged mankind
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| 18 Feb 02
| Robin McKie
Posted on 02/18/2002 12:59:05 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: dead
Good. I was aware of a supernova in the hood, but not of numbers and dates.
To: Senator Pardek
Who knows why this corner of this galaxy was selected. But if supernovas create the conditions for man, the center of the galaxy with 10,000 times more supernovas must be crawling with humans.
To: abwehr
Actually the part about the emergence of the our modern branch of apes seems superfluous. This is an article about the ozone layer, perhaps inspired by the new ozone hole near Europe.
To: Night Hides Not
Did someone say Cheese?
24
posted on
02/18/2002 1:45:39 PM PST
by
snowfox
To: RightWhale
I wonder what qualities were possessed by bi-pedal hunting apes on the African savannas that allowed them to surivive a super-nova's radiation.
25
posted on
02/18/2002 1:58:21 PM PST
by
DentsRun
To: Asclepius
My intuitions are correct. We are a race of genetically damaged mutants. An accident. An evolutionary blotch. A rent in the cosmic fabric. Never meant to be. An affront to nature; an outrage to the gods That's pretty funny. But I agree with what you wrote (even though I'm not sure you do yourself). We're just an unknown blip in the universe, doomed to fret and storm our hour on the stage and then to disappear unlamented for all eternity. No one knows we're here. No one cares. There's no purpose to our existence (though it seems to me that we're all a little happier when we help someone else.)
26
posted on
02/18/2002 2:05:34 PM PST
by
DentsRun
To: DentsRun
"I wonder what qualities were possessed by bi-pedal hunting apes on the African savannas that allowed them to surivive a super-nova's radiation." Body hair?
27
posted on
02/18/2002 2:29:51 PM PST
by
blam
To: RightWhale
Interesting article, especially considering the iron-60 deposits.
Bump for later.
To: blam
Body hair?Then, theorectically, I should be able to survive the next supernovae blast. =^)
But who would I procreate with? I shudder to think. =^(
To: RightWhale
these hazardous, radioactive times.Is iron-60 radioactive? Is UV radiation
considered radioactive? Or is this a
mistake?
30
posted on
02/18/2002 2:36:53 PM PST
by
gcruse
To: RightWhale
If I have this year's current fad wisdom down pat, homo sapiens is supposed to have come into being only some 100M to 250M years ago. So this supernova 2 mill yrs ago might have nudged things along but failed to produce homo sapiens.
Ho, hum. Wonder where science will be next year. At least the Bible still reads the same as it did way back when I was in college.
31
posted on
02/18/2002 2:39:04 PM PST
by
crystalk
To: Jeremy_Bentham
"Then, theorectically, I should be able to survive the next supernovae blast. =^) " That was a guess but, if true, you don't have enough body hair to survive another blast.
32
posted on
02/18/2002 2:44:30 PM PST
by
blam
To: blam
Well, considering my dating options at that point, I may not want to survive another blast :)
To: RightWhale
Geologists have found that plankton and molluscs were wiped out in vast numbers and that land animals and plants were also affected. 'We now think these creatures were killed off because Earth's ozone was blasted away by two or more supernovae,' said Benítez. 'There would have been no protection against the Sun's intense ultraviolet radiation. All sorts of changes could have resulted.' If you stripped all of the ozone from the atmosphere today, the UV light from the sun would replace it very quickly. UV light makes ozone (O3) by splitting oxygen molecules (O2) into atomic oxygen (O) which quickly re-combine to form ozone. This paper suggests that the ozone layer was "blasted" away, which implies a shock wave. (rather than radiation) If he is suggesting a shock wave, then why would it only take the ozone layer? What about the rest of the atmosphere? If the density of the dust and gas in the shockwave was high enough to strip away the ozone layer, it would also deposit huge amounts of dust and gas into the atmosphere.
The asteroid theory of mass extinctions claims that dust in the upper atmosphere blotted out the sunlight, causing plants and the rest of the food chain to collapse. The shock wave remnant of a supernova would contain lots of dust and gas, and due to its velocity, lots of that dust (including Iron 60) would be dumped into the upper atmosphere, causing global extinction by the same method as the asteroid impact. (No need to invoke the ozone layer and UV light to explain this one)
To: DentsRun
...I wonder what qualities were possessed by bi-pedal hunting apes on the African savannas that allowed them to surivive a super-nova's radiation... SPF-2200 sunscreen fortified with Iron-60 maybe?
Probably made from bannana mush and mud.
35
posted on
02/18/2002 4:40:03 PM PST
by
XLurk
To: Jeremy_Bentham
Well, considering my dating options at that point, I may not want to survive another blast. Not even if you end up dating Rogue, Storm or Mystique?
To: e_engineer
Of course there's no telling what else might have been dumped here at the same time.
Hopefully not any more Star Blast Gum,that stuff is aweful,can't even blow square bubbles with it.
Gamma,I'm late for my Lunar morphology class,got to jet!
37
posted on
02/18/2002 4:50:06 PM PST
by
tet68
To: John Locke
Considering that those who survive will survive because of body hair (theoretically, of course), I'm not so sure that that's who I'll be hanging out with.
However, if those should be the mutants we're talking about, I suppose I could hang around.
To: RightWhale
The gods can speak for themselves. I just want to know who the weisenheimer is that keeps taking bites out of the moon.
To: RightWhale
Many are rare - like iron-60. These particles hit our atmosphere and settle like a thin layer of dust over the planet.' Intriguingly, the iron-60 layer found by the German group did not come from a single supernova but appeared to come from a number of them. 'Different layers seem to have fallen at different times, but all around two million years ago,' said Benítez. v Revelation 12
3. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads.
4. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.
5. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.
6. The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
7. And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.
8. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.
9. The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
40
posted on
02/18/2002 7:29:17 PM PST
by
Elsie
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