This is the third book in the series that included 'The Theory of Nothing' the "The Universe Revealed.' My purpose in this new book is to more fully explain how science is actually done and how science fits into our culture along with religion and p...
We don't realize how lucky we are. Our Sun is an ordinary G-class yellow dwarf star that is not all that large or bright as stars go. At least we don't have to worry about it going supernova and blasting us to smithereens.
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A supernova at 30 light years away would fry the Earth with UV radiation that would literally wipe all life off our planet. There are very large stars out there in our galaxy, stars that would make our Sun look like a puny ember.
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Bellatrix is a typical blue giant O-class star. It's the 25th brightest star in the night sky. It has 8.6 times the mass of our Sun (5.75 times the radius of our Sun) and a temperature of 22,000 K, compared to the 5,778 K temperature of our Sun. Its luminosity is almost 10,000 times that of our star. The amount of UV light would instantly blind us even at a billion miles away, and at the distance our Earth is from our Sun, Bellatrix would fry us to carbon dust.
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Rigel is a supergiant blue star in the constellation of Orion, and it's the 7th brightest star in the night sky. It's a B-class star that's 115 times the radius of our Sun with at temperature of 12,100 K and a luminosity of 1.75 times 10 to the 5 power greater than the luminosity of our Sun. Just think about the idea of our Sun would be 175,000 times brighter than it is now. That's difficult to imagine. One thing to keep in mind is that Rigel is only 8 million years old and it's already off the main sequence, which means that it's no longer burning hydrogen in its core. That indicates that it will soon become a red giant star and go supernova, and since it's only 850 light years away, it could cause a real hurt to our planet. In other words it's high on the list of potential killer stars. These are stars that could explode and emit a gamma ray burst that could affect life.
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Eta Carinae is a potential life killer. It's a binary system in the constellation Carina that has become brighter than Rigel and has a combined brightness that is 5 million times stronger than our Sun. This star system has been going through brightness changes for several hundred years. Since its blue variable star component had lost 30 solar masses it is expected to go supernova soon. And, because it's only 7500 light years away, it could cause serious damage to our Earth. This could happen tomorrow or it could be a thousand years from now. That's how little we know about this type of star system. Fortunately, the axis of Eta Carinae is not aimed at Earth so its gamma ray burst would not be effective as a life killer.
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The truth is that there are many killer stars out there and they are killing life on planets all over the universe. Evidence for this is that the Kepler Space telescope has detected disintegrated planet debris around white dwarf stars. The consensus is that all stars kill their planets. Our Sun will kill our Earth in 4 to 5 billion years. It will scorch life from our planet in less than a hundred million years. Is this infanticide on a cosmological scale?
