Space cataclysm that can slowly cook the Earth around
Imagine a space cataclysm, where the Earth is hit by a deadly wave sterilizing all life of the bright side, but the dark side is more or less intact (at least the atmosphere and life are still in place).
The catch: it is not a momentary strike like a GRB, but a prolonged (and rather wide) beam of death. While the Earth rotates, all life is slowly cooked, except maybe for those in underground shelters (though I'd prefer them to die too) and submarines. The beam is wide enough, so the Earth, while moving through space, has enough time to rotate a couple of times before leaving the beam (or before the intensity drops down).
The survival: flying an aircraft from East to West, staying in the shadow long enough for the Earth to leave the deadzone (of for the beam to lose intensity).
The questions: what kind of source can emit such a beam? And what kind of aircraft can carry enough fuel to circumvent the Earth a couple of times, and provide the necessary velocity? Let's assume that we only have a few hours to prepare our craft (the other side is already toasted), so we can't reingeneer a passenger plane, for example, to carry fuel tanks in the passenger space; attaching standard outboard tanks is ok. Number of seats is unimportant for now.
The candidate: the Sun going supernova ("Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven), but I'd prefer a more plausible scenario.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/14108. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Gamma-ray bursts
Let's not give up on the gamma-ray burst (GRB) idea so quickly. Sure, most GRBs are quite short, but there are exceptions: ultra-long gamma-ray bursts.
While normal GRBs last on the order of seconds - with some lasting for minutes - ultra-long GRBs can last for hours. Frostfyre cited a 28 minute-long GRB, GRB 101225A. It lasted for a whopping 28 minutes. Yet I mentioned hour-long bursts. There have been some observations of candidate ultra-long GRBs lasting for many hours.
We don't know much about GRBs in general, so it's difficult to figure why ultra-long GRBs last so long - or even what the events are that cause them. Gendre et al. (2013) explored the case of a blue supergiant undergoing a supernova, applying it to GRB 111209A. Their findings actually go against the magnetar model of a GRB, stating that magnetar formation from a supernova cannot account for data gathered from GRBs. Gender et al. mention numerous GRBs lasting for thousands of seconds, with one (Swift J1644+57) lasting for 2160000 seconds. That could have been a tidal disruption event, which I'll get to later.
Boer et al. (2014) briefly mention the progenitor possibilities, stating that an extremely massive progenitor would be necessary. Another promising hypothesis is that accretion from a massive star onto a companion object, not a supernova, could be the source of ultra-long GRBs. Virgili et al. (2013) also give a good overview of potential progenitors, noting that continuous accretion of the outer layers of the supergiant could be responsible for the duration.
The point of all this is that if you have the right progenitor, a GRB can last for hours and hours.
Tidal disruption events
I mentioned tidal disruption events earlier. Simply put, these happen when a star is ripped apart by tidal forces from a supermassive black hole. The result will be similar to a GRB, but it will last for a long time - perhaps days.
The one downside to using a tidal disruption event is that Earth is far from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Astrophysical jet
Another (more interesting) option is to use an astrophysical jet - the matter emitted along the polar axis of some objects accreting matter. These often come from supermassive black holes, but there's no reason that a massive intermediate-mass black hole couldn't emit them.
Bipolar outflows, coming from some young stars, are also astrophysical jets.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads