Death from the Skies!! Blogging

A colleague in another building emails me, inquiring why the Brookings Institution is holding Gregg Easterbrook out as an "expert" on "environmental policy; global warming; science; space policy; 'well-being' research; Christian theology..." and pointing me to Andrew Northrup:

The Poor Man: Dear God make it stop:

[Gregg Easterbrook's] Creepy Cosmic Thought: A running mystery of cosmology is gamma-ray bursts.... Astronomers assume gamma-ray bursts must be natural in origin.... [But] what if they are the muzzle flashes of horrific planet-killer weapons? Recently Louisiana State researchers... detected very strong gamma bursts coming not from deep space, but from about 3,000 light years distant.... [My] reaction: Great, maybe there is an interstellar war going on just 3,000 light years away....

[E]ven if there is never any way to exceed or circumvent the light-speed barrier, relatively nearby planets might still fight by hurling nuclear bombs at each other at 99 percent of light speed.... John Duezabou of Helena, Mont., adds this creepy postscript: “A bellicose or paranoid extra-solar civilization that could accelerate an object to 99 percent of light speed wouldn’t need to launch bombs at us. They could shoot anything with devastating results, because the kinetic energy of a moving object is half its mass multiplied by the square of its velocity, or KE = 1/2 mv2. Thus, one pound of anything — a pint of vanilla ice cream, for instance — accelerated to 99 percent of light speed has an energy of about 4.8 megatons, roughly the blast yield of the largest hydrogen bombs.”... 

Andrew comments:

Now, that a man who writes a sports column likes to fantasize about space wars and disaster movie plots is not news. That a widely-published man who is employed by the influential Brookings Institution... doesn’t have any sense of what that Einstein fellow was on about might be news...

My colleague comments:

• Kinetic energy is not mv²/2--that is the low-energy Newtonian limit approximation--but rather m₀c²[(1-(v/c)²)^-1 - 1], which at a velocity of 0.99c is eleven times as great as the 4.8 megatons endorsed by Easterbrook.
• It is not clear what gamma ray bursts are, but it is very clear that they are NOT the muzzle flashes of gigantic cannon launching kinetic projectiles to relativistic velocities.

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UPDATE: Brad Johson of the Center for American Progress is on the case

Comments

[Neal]

From NASA

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0504/06extinction/

"A gamma-ray burst originating within 6,000 light years from Earth would have a devastating effect on life," said Dr. Adrian Melott of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. "We don't know exactly when one came, but we're rather sure it did come -- and left its mark. What's most surprising is that just a 10-second burst can cause years of devastating ozone damage," Melott added.

A scientific paper describing this finding appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The lead author is Brian Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate at University of Kansas.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known. Most originate in distant galaxies, and a large percentage likely arise from explosions of stars over 15 times more massive than our Sun. A burst creates two oppositely-directed beams of gamma rays that race off into space.

Thomas says that a gamma-ray burst may have caused the Ordovician extinction 450 million years ago, killing 60 percent of all marine invertebrates. Life was largely confined to the sea, although there is evidence of primitive land plants during this period

In the new work, the team used detailed computer models to calculate the effects of a nearby gamma-ray burst on the atmosphere and the consequences for life.

Thomas, with Dr. Charles Jackman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., calculated the effect of a nearby gamma-ray burst on the Earth's atmosphere. Gamma- rays, a high-energy form of light, can break molecular nitrogen (N2) into nitrogen atoms, which react with molecular oxygen (O2) to form nitric oxide (NO). NO will destroy ozone (O3) and produce nitrogen dioxide (NO2). NO2 will then react with atomic oxygen to reform NO. More NO means more ozone destruction. Computer models show that up to half the ozone layer is destroyed within weeks. Five years on, at least 10 percent is still destroyed.

Next,researchers calculated the effect of ultraviolet radiation on life. Deep-sea creatures living several feet below water would be protected. Surface-dwelling plankton and other life near the surface, however, would not survive. Plankton is the foundation of the marine food chain.

Dr. Bruce Lieberman, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas, originated the idea that a gamma-ray burst specifically could have caused the great Ordovician extinction, 200 million years before the dinosaurs. An ice age is thought to have caused this extinction. However, gamma-ray burst could have caused a fast die-out early on and also could have triggered the significant drop in surface temperature on Earth.
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If the above is true, I would suggest Eaterbrook not worry so much about a carton of ice cream hurtling toward the earth.

[Neal]

And also from NASA, the closest gamma ray burst previous to Easterbrooks claim:
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Astronomers have uncovered evidence that a powerful gamma-ray burst, one of nature's most catastrophic explosions, occurred in our own Milky Way galaxy just a few thousand years ago.

Only 35,000 light years away lies W49B, the supernova remnant left over from the cataclysmic burst. New evidence pointing to a gamma ray burst origin for this remnant was discovered by X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, combined with infrared observations from the Palomar 200-inch telescope in southern California.
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http://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/f_w49b.html
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As it has been proved in the recent few years, "science" does not need to be reality based.

[midcal]

What frequent visitor to apod hasn't wondered if some observed astronomical events are, in fact, evidence of distant warfare (or gardening, for that matter)? It's tempting to cut Easterbrook some slack, at least personally for considering the same.

[Amos Newcombe]

If you're going to use a recent book title, you should at least link to the guy that wrote it :-)

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

Phil runs a good smackdown delivery service too — I'd like to see what he says about this.

[anonymous37]

m0c2[(1-(v/c)^2)^(-1) - 1] is a typo, you meant m0c2/[(1-(v/c)^2)^(1/2)].

[*Kinetic energy.* Kinetic energy + rest mass = total energy. It's not a typo.]

[micah]

No it's not. Your formula is for the total energy, which includes the mass-energy mc^2 which is still present when the body is at rest.

[kharris]

Wikipedia informs us that Easterbrook has a "bachelor's degree in political science from Colorado College and a master's in journalism from Northwestern". The fact that his only science degree is in political science is not a bar to understanding science, but it is suggestive. Allow me to ask, is there nobody actually trained in science who has a better grasp of science in general than Easterbrook? (Somebody at Wikipedia has dug up an article in which Easterbrook is described as a polymath, but we have ample reason demonstrated here to doubt that characterization. Let it go.) Among what I presume to be tens of thousands (I'm trying to understate to a reasonable degree to avoid any appearance of hyperbole) of people better qualified than Easterbrook in the sciences, can none be pursuaded to write for us?

This is the David Brooks problem, all over again. Merely having the job seems enough to keep the job. Performance matters not.

[Bruce Garrett]

What the previous commenters said. The bursts have been observed coming from everywhere, not just mostly within the galactic plane. Thus, most of them are from sources outside our own galaxy. But they can happen close by too. What's needed for any one of them to be dangerous to Earth, is if we happen to be right in the path of the "beam" and it's close.

I was reading an article some weeks ago concerning a binary star system called "Wolf-Rayet 104". Looking at images of the system taken by the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, you see a lovely, nearly perfect spiral of material coming from the two stars as one of them begins to shed material, possibly in it's last stages before going supernova. One of the astronomers in the article remarked that you'd only see such a perfect spiral, if you were in effect looking right down the pole of the star that will eventually explode. So we'd be right in the path of the beam if it generates one. They say it's about 8,000 light years away.

Never mind space wars. Nature itself is quite capable of giving Earth a bad day or two. Which is why we need to learn as much as we can about the environment out there, and teach ourselves the trick of living on other worlds, and in space, and distribute the human population around a bit...

[Colin Danby]

What, and deny nature a clear shot at getting rid of us once and for all?

[anonymous37]

No it's not. Your formula is for the total energy, which includes the mass-energy mc^2 which is still present when the body is at rest.

Wait, do you mean me or do you mean DeLong? Because yes, you do subtract m0c^2 for KE, but DeLong still has a typo: KE = m0c^2/[(1-(v/c)^2)^(1/2)]- m0c^2, not m0c^2[(1-(v/c)^2)^(-1) - 1].

[Jrossi]

What kind of a fool would use the wrong equation for kinetic energy on the internet, and use his real name while he was at it? Damn, I'd never leave the house again if I did that. If you don't know something about a subject, keep your fool mouth shut--or at least post under an assumed name.

[Kaleberg]

"Great, maybe there is an interstellar war going on just 3,000 light years away...."

No maybe about it. Not only is this spot on, but the U.S. government has been in on it since the 1970s, at least. See a related article in Saga, particularly page 94.

http://www.kaleberg.com/spacewar

[Twofish]

\If gamma ray bursts were close by, then they wouldn't be very energetic. The reason that we think that gamma ray bursters are extremely energetic is because they are far away.

Also you are thinking very small. Hydrogen bombs are not planet killing weapons. A four megaton explosion will level a city, but the Earth isn't going to notice. If you planet wide destruction, you really want to hit the earth with a large asteroid or tiny nanobots.

What's really ironic in all of this is how gamma ray bursters were discovered. They were discovered in the late 1960's by gamma ray spy satellites that were intended to detect earth bound gamma ray flashes from nuclear tests to verify Soviet compliance with the limited test ban treaty.

[Twofish]

What's really a little scary isn't the gamma ray flash that happened 3000 light years away, but the one that was detected in September 1979 in the South Atlantic by the same satellites that discovered gamma ray bursters.

That may or may not have been a South African nuclear test. The prospect of space aliens is much less creepy to me than the fact that no one seems to be able to say definitively whether the Vela incident was or was not a nuclear test. The really creepy part about that is that if no one can say whether it was or was not a South African nuclear test, then it seems to me that no one can say whether or not the six completed nuclear bombs that South Africa destroyed in 1993 were all that there were.

[Tomas]

Most scientist believe that lightning is a sort of electric discharge of some kind, the details of which I do not understand. But what if the real reason is the ionization of our atmosphere caused by alien spacecraft, while they fight a shadow war for the soul of the galaxy.

This would make sense because if a wormhole was opened (for the warpdrives of the alien spacecraft) then that would interact with the subatomic higgs-bosons and cause the spin of the boson to change, which would ionize the atmosphere, like so: Hb^3=v'2(M*C^2). And they would be able to power these spacecraft using fudge! Makes you think...

[Jon H]

kharris wrote: " Allow me to ask, is there nobody actually trained in science who has a better grasp of science in general than Easterbrook? "

NPR's science correspondent, David Kestenbaum has a BS in Physics from Yale and a doctorate in Physics from Harvard.

He's also been doing good reporting on the financial crisis as part of NPR's Planet Money.

[Ginger Yellow]

" Allow me to ask, is there nobody actually trained in science who has a better grasp of science in general than Easterbrook?"

This question is better phrased as: "Is there anybody at all who has a worse grasp of science in general than Easterbrook?"

[Monte Davis]

This is the Easterbrook who keeps trotting out a bogus analogy between CO2 and previous "pollution" challenges, as in Slate last Sept. 8:

"Greenhouse gases are an air-pollution problem. Smog and acid rain, the two previous serious air-pollution problems, once were viewed as emergency threats" [but have been dealt with successfully]...

He seems genuinely unaware (1) that C02 is not an avoidable side effect (like the nitrogen and sulfur compounds involved in smog and acid rain) but intrinsic to carbon combustion, and (2) that the quantities involved are many orders of magnitude greater.

Magnitude matters, at least to the numerate.

[Ralph H.]

Let me weigh in on Easterbrook's behalf. His ESPN column is about pro football, and he does seem to be fairly well-informed on that subject. He writes in an entertaining style, so that we regular readers tolerate his frequent, lengthy digressions on other topics. Interstellar warfare certainly isn't something we expect him to know all that much about, but on other topics he's on solid ground. He frequently attacks high-end CEO perks like corporate jets, and as someone who was once a corporate pilot I can say that he's generally on target. Also, he seems to be a practicing Christian or at least is respectful of Christian beliefs, and has a pleasingly liberal perspective -- some years ago (in another column or article) he wrote a moving defense of gay marriage based on Christian doctrine which I found utterly convincing, and wish it had been in evidence during recent political campaigns.

[Daniel Hellerstein]

I am with Ralph H -- even though Easterbrook is way to negative on the Patriots (yeah, I am Boston fan), I find him to be refreshing and amusing.

And for al the critics of his precise math -- you are looking mighty picayune, worrying about just the right equation. It's not like he is trying to build a suspension bridge.

More importantly, the paramount "religious" issue for secularists is "where are the 'aliens'". So idle speculation about gamma ray wars (or whatever) kind of do have intrinsic interest.

[karsten]

To suggest war wouldn't they have to be A BIT more localised and closer in time? Far as I know the GRBs occur in no discernible pattern. This is not science it's basic thinking.

Unless aliens are strange enough to shoot unfeasibly powerful energyweapons from random places at random intervals. Mischievous Minds of the Cultureverse, anyone?

[Bruce Middleton]

Karsten: one explanation of anisotropy would be multiple sources: life a widely-dispersed normal development, and interstellar warfare its routine endpoint. Thus a process of nature, no less than the death of stars due to fuel exhaustion.