• Question: Is the light from a Supernova dangerous ?

    Asked by 525nepk48 to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 4 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 4 Nov 2017:

      I’ll be honest, I don’t know, but I’m sure it could be – supernovas are enormous! This great article (https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/) asked the question, “Which of the following would be brighter… a supernova (seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth), or the detonation of a hydrogen bomb *pressed against your eyeball*?”
      It turns out that supernova would not only win, but would be around 1,000,000,000 times brighter!! A billion times brighter than a hydrogen bomb in the face! I’m sure we wouldn’t have to get too close to one for its light to get dangerous…

    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 4 Nov 2017:

      Well, NASA says that we observe supernovas pretty regularly: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-a-supernova.html so I think it’s safe to say it’s not dangerous in most cases, at least from the distances we usually observe them.

      I suspect if we were closer it might be a problem, but I wonder (and don’t know) if we’d be worrying about things other than the light of an exploding star if we were closer! I read a great sci-fi book set in a world where people knew a supernova was about to obliterate them and were able to move out before it happened – “Iron Sky”, book two of the Eschaton series by Charles Stross https://www.goodreads.com/series/52277-eschaton

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