>From a planetary defense perspective, Earth is entirely defenseless because GRBs offer zero warning. Because gamma rays travel at the speed of light, the radiation burst and the visual data of the explosion reach Earth at the exact same millisecond. There is no way to detect it coming until it has already hit.
>>17067041It is what it is. GRBs probably involve stellar phenomena unlikely to be anywhere near us statistically, and if there's nothing you can do about it (there isn't), then there's absolutely nothing to gain by worrying about it.
>>17067041so what? It can just hit from one direction. If you're lucky and are on the other side of the planet you'll survive.
>>17067089Wouldn't a sufficiently powerful one ionize the atmosphere? If it's enough to fuck one side of the earth, the other side is gonna be far from okay.
>>17067107Earths magnetic field will fix this
>>17067110I don't believe that's true.
>>17067107Yup, it was only a few years ago that GRB 221009A did measurably disturb Earth's upper atmosphere and ionosphere despite the source being billions of light-years away. So one of similar power and much closer would definitely fuck us over.
>>17067041>put gigantic mirror in orbit>point it at the nearest superhabitable planetnuttin personnel
>>17067149 >put two gigantic mirrors in orbit >point the second one towards India
>>17067149>>17067285>put a battery in orbit and just absorb all the gamma radiation>have free energy until the end of civilizationUmm, hello, scientists?!?!?
>>17067041True we are defenseless, luckily the probability for an event of significant damage is very low.It is probably no coincidence that Earth is located on the outskirts of the galaxy. Planets in denser regions are more prone to extinction-level events, so it's more difficult for life to evolve there.
>>17067291How about life in oceans? Perhaps water worlds are surviving these things.
>>17067296While water is good at stopping particles (so alpha and beta radiation) and why it's used as shielding in nuclear reactors and storage, it's less good at stopping gamma radiation (photons) which is primarily what GRBs produce. So depending on how close the GRB is, the oceans could still be sterilised of all life.
>>17067331Life is going to pretty much always survive a gamma ray burst (unless it's so close that it literally strips off the atmosphere) simply because it won't hit half the planet. It will just reset life to much more primitive stage. This is true if there's an ocean or not, vast majority of ocean life either directly lives or relies upon the productive top layer, intelligent life is just too energy hungry to survive off chemo energy from the bottom and gamma ray burst is going to destroy the top layer of the ocean all the same as it's going to destroy the top layer of the soil.
>>17067331Seems gamma radiation is attenuated by 90 percent per meter (sources disagree). So algae will be fried but life below 100 m should be fine, unless they depend on algae.
