Timeline for The weird case of the unresponsive Earth - why does the Earth stop communicating with Mars?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 14, 2018 at 7:32 | comment | added | SRM | It doesn’t matter — no part of Earth will be able to transmit through the ambient EM. It’s a shell around the planet, even the side not being cooked. | |
| Oct 14, 2018 at 7:15 | comment | added | Mike Scott | @dn3s But for the parts of the Earth facing away from Mars to also be the parts facing away from the jet, the jet has to come from the direction of Mars, so it hits Mars as well. | |
| Oct 14, 2018 at 3:18 | comment | added | user371366 | you wouldn't have to cook all of the earth simultaneously. parts of the earth facing away from mars are unable to transmit to mars. | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 23:33 | comment | added | SRM | @maartinus and that’s a fine assumption to make. Is it improbable? Yes. So is being hit in the first place. But is it possible? Yes. Indeed, flip the probability around — if you trace the path of the jet, you would expect it would hit many worlds at myriad angles, including ones that would cook whole planet. Why not make Earth one that gets hit? Perfectly legit storytelling. No physics violation. | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 18:03 | comment | added | maaartinus | "Earth’s rotation would cook all sides evenly" - You're assuming that the jet hits the Earth and stays hitting it for hours, but that's extremely improbable. Even the tiniest change in direction causes the jet at our system to move with more than speed of light (it's no real FTL; imagine a laser in a shaking hand pointing at the Moon). | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 17:12 | comment | added | SRM | @wojowu Hmm. You may have a point about the edge diffusion. I was thinking the edge would be pretty well defined unless it had recently passed through some diffusing material such as a nebula. Anyone know a way to get harder numbers on the diffusion once the jet is away from the black hole source? | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 17:10 | comment | added | SRM | @MikeScott could a broadcast actually get out during the EM storm? It would cut off transmissions long before the cooking started. | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 16:21 | comment | added | Wojowu | Another problem: jets are not so narrow, their width is a couple percent of their length (source), so even one from the nearest star would have width many times the radius of the solar system. We also can't argue Earth is hit by an edge of the jet, since the edge is not clear-cut - if it's enough to scorch Earth, Mars will feel it to | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 15:57 | comment | added | Mike Scott | It wouldn’t cook the Earth fast enough to prevent the news from getting to Mars. There’s non-stop data transfer between Earth and Mars, so whatever happens has to affect the whole Earth simultaneously. | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 15:33 | comment | added | SRM | And that’s if the beam came straight in on our pole. If it came in at all at an angle, Earth’s rotation would cook all sides evenly. | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 15:31 | comment | added | SRM | No. It would encompass the planet by combination of atmospheric scattering and solar reflection. @MikeScott | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 15:26 | comment | added | Mike Scott | That would cook one side of the Earth, but the other side would be shielded by thousands of miles of rock and metal. | |
| Oct 13, 2018 at 15:14 | history | answered | SRM | CC BY-SA 4.0 |