What distance is safe with supernova explosions, is a matter of debate among astronomers, the new findings are providing us with new data to refine the level of risk of supernovae, one of the latest findings occurred a few weeks ago At the end of April, NASA announced that it had discovered a new cosmic danger for the earth and for any other planet with life.
This is a new destructive effect of supernovae that was not known, it was discovered using data from NASA's Chanda ray observatory and other telescopes, with which 31 supernovae and their aftermath were studied, and thanks to this work, astronomers identified the new threat as a phase during which a living planet more than 100 years away may be showered with deadly X-ray radiation.
But where does this rain of radiation come from, because before the star explodes it becomes a red giant for a period, it is a phase that varies in time, stars more massive than the sun last only a few million years as red giants , but those that are a little smaller than the sun can be like this for several billion years and can even have a habitable zone, habitable planets illuminated by a red giant, a red sun like crypton's but hey that's it another story
The important thing is that in the end the outer layers of the red giants are loosened and large clouds of gas and dust remain around the star, something similar to what is happening to Betterhouse, when the star explodes the shock wave of the supernova. It hits that dense surrounding gas that exploded and the impact produces a huge amount of X-rays, the effect of which can last for decades which makes it even more deadly.
The researchers' work shows that planets can be subjected to deadly doses of radiation even those located about 160 light-years away, that's more than the distance previously believed to be safe in the event of a supernova explosion.
If a torrent of X-rays sweeps across a nearby planet, the radiation can seriously alter the planet's atmospheric chemistry, but for an Earth-like planet that process would remove a large part of the ozone layer that protects us from dangerous radiation from the Cosmos and the Earth. sun, could also Lead to the demise of a wide range of organisms Especially marine ones that are at the bottom of the food chain, which would ultimately lead to a mass extinction event.
Betterheus is 640 light years away from us so we are still at a safe distance, but such an event occurred in the earth's past a supernova that had terrible consequences on earth was what surely caused the great devonian extinction Some 359 million years ago according to a study published in 2020 by scientists at the University of Illinois, that explosion must have occurred much less than 160 light years away from Earth.
It destroyed the ozone layer and caused very serious changes in the planet's climate, which led to the extinction of at least 83% of living species, it was so deadly that life on earth almost had to start over.
Although the earth and the entire solar system are currently in a safe space in terms of possible supernova explosions, many other planets in the milky way are not, and this has implications for our search for life forms beyond earth since which reduces what is known as the Galactic habitable zone, where conditions would be conducive to life as we know it.
The habitable zones in the galaxy may be few, but in them we could find other inhabited worlds that have survived supernova explosions like Earth.
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