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Device breathes life into H1N1 patient
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NEW DELHI: A machine traditionally used to allow gas exchange outside the body during a bypass surgery, holds out hope for swine flu patients . It can alleviate acute respiratory distress, responsible for death in most swine flu cases. The virus has claimed over 400 lives in India this year.
Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) is a machine which acts like an artificial lung by removing carbon dioxide from the blood and adding oxygen outside the body. Doctors at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital have used it successfully to save a 54-year-old man suffering from swine flu.
Dr Arup Basu, vice chairman of the hospital's pulmonolgy department, said Rajesh Kumara, a Dwarka-based industrialist, was referred to them by another private hospital in Dwarka on January 30. "He was suffering from severe respiratory distress and de-saturation. He could not breathe or walk and had to be admitted to the ICU. We put him on high-frequency ventilator support and antibiotics but it failed to improve his oxygenation. We then put him on ECMO on February 7 as a last-ditch effort," said Basu. He said the patient remained on ECMO for a record 24 days, and weaned off gradually after his natural lungs showed signs of improvement.
The patient's family were all smiles. "In the last one month, ever since he got admitted, there have been many trying moments. Rajesh suffered from secondary infection and there was risk of haemorrhage if the blood clotted. It is the doctors' effort and god's grace which has seen him through," said Ranjana, the patient's wife.
Doctors said acute respiratory distress syndrome is the most common cause of death among swine flu patients. "We could save Kumar only because the lungs were given rest till the infection subsided. Usually, such patients give way due to lack of oxygenation in the blood," said Dr Arun Mohanty, consultant cardiologist. But, he added that ECMO cannot be used in patients with irreversible respiratory failure.
The hospital authorities said the cardiac anaesthesia team headed by Dr Arun Maheshwari worked round the clock to save the patient. "ECMO has proved to be lifesaver in this difficult case of swine flu. I hope this important technology will help in saving the lives of many more critical patients in future," said Dr D S Rana, chairman, board of management at SGRH.
The use of ECMO to save swine flu patient is new in India but it has been done extensively abroad. A study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association ( JAMA) in 2011, said an investigation at a UK hospital found that twice as many non-ECMO-referred patients died on not being referred for ECMO during 2009-10.
Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) is a machine which acts like an artificial lung by removing carbon dioxide from the blood and adding oxygen outside the body. Doctors at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital have used it successfully to save a 54-year-old man suffering from swine flu.
Dr Arup Basu, vice chairman of the hospital's pulmonolgy department, said Rajesh Kumara, a Dwarka-based industrialist, was referred to them by another private hospital in Dwarka on January 30. "He was suffering from severe respiratory distress and de-saturation. He could not breathe or walk and had to be admitted to the ICU. We put him on high-frequency ventilator support and antibiotics but it failed to improve his oxygenation. We then put him on ECMO on February 7 as a last-ditch effort," said Basu. He said the patient remained on ECMO for a record 24 days, and weaned off gradually after his natural lungs showed signs of improvement.
The patient's family were all smiles. "In the last one month, ever since he got admitted, there have been many trying moments. Rajesh suffered from secondary infection and there was risk of haemorrhage if the blood clotted. It is the doctors' effort and god's grace which has seen him through," said Ranjana, the patient's wife.
Doctors said acute respiratory distress syndrome is the most common cause of death among swine flu patients. "We could save Kumar only because the lungs were given rest till the infection subsided. Usually, such patients give way due to lack of oxygenation in the blood," said Dr Arun Mohanty, consultant cardiologist. But, he added that ECMO cannot be used in patients with irreversible respiratory failure.
The hospital authorities said the cardiac anaesthesia team headed by Dr Arun Maheshwari worked round the clock to save the patient. "ECMO has proved to be lifesaver in this difficult case of swine flu. I hope this important technology will help in saving the lives of many more critical patients in future," said Dr D S Rana, chairman, board of management at SGRH.
The use of ECMO to save swine flu patient is new in India but it has been done extensively abroad. A study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association ( JAMA) in 2011, said an investigation at a UK hospital found that twice as many non-ECMO-referred patients died on not being referred for ECMO during 2009-10.
New material tries to solve global problems
Singaporean scientists have discovered a new
low-cost material that could do everything from cleaning water to
producing clean energy to even healing wounds in the form of a bandage
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), led by Darren Sun have succeeded in developing a single, revolutionary nanomaterial that can do all the above and at very low cost compared to existing technology.
This breakthrough which has taken Sun five years to develop is dubbed the Multi-use Titanium Dioxide (TiO2). It is formed by turning titanium dioxide crystals into patented nanofibres, which can then be easily fabricated into patented flexible filter membranes which include a combination of carbon, copper, zinc or tin, depending on the specific end product needed.
Titanium dioxide is a cheap and abundant material, which has been scientifically proven to have the ability to accelerate a chemical reaction (photocatalytic) and is also able to bond easily with water (hydrophilic).
“While there is no single silver bullet to solving two of the world’s biggest challenges: cheap renewable energy and an abundant supply of clean water; our single multi-use membrane comes close, with its titanium dioxide nanoparticles being a key catalyst in discovering such solutions,” Sun said. “With our unique nanomaterial, we hope to be able to help convert today’s waste into tomorrow’s resources, such as clean water and energy.”
Discovery of the material
Sun had initially used titanium dioxide with iron oxide to make anti-bacterial water filtration membranes to solve biofouling - bacterial growth which clogs up the pores of membranes, obstructing water flow.
While developing the membrane, Sun’s team also discovered that it could act as a photocatalyst, turning wastewater into hydrogen and oxygen under sunlight while still producing clean water. Such a water-splitting effect is usually caused by Platinum, a precious metal that is both expensive and rare.
“With such a discovery, it is possible to concurrently treat wastewater and yet have a much cheaper option of storing solar energy in the form of hydrogen so that it can be available any time, day or night, regardless of whether the sun is shining or not, which makes it truly a source of clean fuel,” said Sun.
“As of now, we are achieving a very high efficiency of about three times more than if we had used platinum, but at a much lower cost, allowing for cheap hydrogen production. In addition, we can concurrently produce clean water for close-to-zero energy cost, which may change our current water reclamation system over the world for future liveable cities.”
Depending on the type of wastewater, the amount of hydrogen generated can be as much as 200 millilitres in an hour. Also to increase hydrogen production, more nanomaterial can be used in larger amounts of wastewater.
With its anti-microbial properties and low cost, the membrane can also be used to make breathable anti-bacterial bandages, which would not only prevent infections and tackle infection at open wounds, but also promote healing by allowing oxygen to permeate through the plaster.
The membrane’s material properties are also similar to polymers used to make plastic bandages currently sold on the market. The material when with other materials or made into another form such as crystals, it can have other uses, such as in solar cells.
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A Car That Runs on Air, Water: Here's How It Works
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/a-car-that-runs-on-air-water-here-s-how-it-works-1AUvv55XQSOzuVdas2S82Q.html?cmpid=taboola.videohttp://www.bloomberg.com/video/a-car-that-runs-on-air-water-here-s-how-it-works-1AUvv55XQSOzuVdas2S82Q.html?cmpid=taboola.video
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Mother Nature Network, Contributor
Written by Jim Motavalli
Oh, no, what can I do now? My career reporting on high gas prices and the race to build fuel-efficient cars is over!
What’s left to report on now that a colleague has emailed me a story about a Japanese company, Genepax, that has invented a “car that runs on nothing but water.” The next thing you know, they’ll invent one that runs on air. Oh, they did that, too? I guess a new era of conflict-free, ultra-green motoring is upon us.
Not.
What is it that leads not only bloggers but respectable TV networks to write so uncritically about stuff like this? Let me make it clear here: There’s no energy-free lunch. You can’t get cars to run on air without expending tons of energy to compress that air. And the range of a car on compressed air is 10 to 15 miles at best.
Genepax has shown a conventional fuel-cell car that runs on hydrogen, and it won’t head down the road on water unless it carries an expensive, heavy electrolyzer on board the car. It says that it will run for an hour on just a liter of water! Great, but what did it cost to extract hydrogen from that water, and how much does the electrolyzer cost?
This sounds like one of those ‘violates the second law of
thermodynamics’ deals we saw weekly at General Motors,” says Byron
McCormick, who headed fuel-cell development at the automaker. “There is
no source of energy available to a moving car to replace the energy
needed to break water.”
Larry Moulthroup of Proton Energy Systems in Connecticut, which lent me my fuel-cell Toyota Highlander, offers some thoughts on how the water car might work. “The speculator in me imagines that perhaps within the trunk-mounted white box there is a reaction, perhaps aluminum oxidation, that is producing hydrogen at or near atmospheric pressure, which in turn is being purified and then is is being used in possibly a hydrogen-air fuel cell to generate the electricity for the drive motor,” he said. “Maybe, but I just don’t know.”
Automakers investigated a version of the Genepax solution when Daimler proposed that cars carry big tanks of methanol, then use an on-board reformer to extract hydrogen on the fly. It wasn’t economical, and confident reports that the automaker would have hundreds of thousands of those cars on the road by 2006 fell by the wayside. Maybe we’ll see commercial fuel-cell cars by 2015, but they’ll carry compressed hydrogen gas, not reformers or electrolyzers.
Note that although the post on cars that run on water is from this month, the gullible Reuters video is from 2008. Not much has been heard from Genepax since, though there was a brief vogue in homemade water bottle-based electrolyzers you could add to your car and instantly achieve a zillion mpg:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ0kjilQd1s
Here’s another naïve water-based power video, this time from Fox in 2006. Again, an automaker was supposedly negotiating with this backyard inventor, but nothing came of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKM4pb9Oxrg
And don’t get me started on air cars, which in the form of the perennially coming technology from French company MDI have gotten huge amounts of free publicity despite many years of failing to deliver on production plans. Here’s Popular Mechanics saying they are coming to our shores in 2009 or 2010, with maybe 1,000 miles of range. And for just $18,000! The last we heard, Indian automaker Tata was interested
Electric battery cars have range problems, and they’re expensive — but they actually work. We can buy them now in the form of cars like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt. They’re not vaporware. Trust me on the cars that run on air or water. You might as well harness a unicorn to your chariot and run with that.
For a little fun, watch this video for some step-by-step instruction on how you, too, can harness limitless power from an innocent bottle of water.
Jim Motavalli blogs for the Mother Nature Network and The New York Times.
More from the Mother Nature Network:
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3/29/2011 @ 2:52PM |5,075 views
Cars That Run On Air And Water
Mother Nature Network, Contributor
Comment Now
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Image via Wikipedia
Oh, no, what can I do now? My career reporting on high gas prices and the race to build fuel-efficient cars is over!
What’s left to report on now that a colleague has emailed me a story about a Japanese company, Genepax, that has invented a “car that runs on nothing but water.” The next thing you know, they’ll invent one that runs on air. Oh, they did that, too? I guess a new era of conflict-free, ultra-green motoring is upon us.
Not.
What is it that leads not only bloggers but respectable TV networks to write so uncritically about stuff like this? Let me make it clear here: There’s no energy-free lunch. You can’t get cars to run on air without expending tons of energy to compress that air. And the range of a car on compressed air is 10 to 15 miles at best.
Genepax has shown a conventional fuel-cell car that runs on hydrogen, and it won’t head down the road on water unless it carries an expensive, heavy electrolyzer on board the car. It says that it will run for an hour on just a liter of water! Great, but what did it cost to extract hydrogen from that water, and how much does the electrolyzer cost?
Larry Moulthroup of Proton Energy Systems in Connecticut, which lent me my fuel-cell Toyota Highlander, offers some thoughts on how the water car might work. “The speculator in me imagines that perhaps within the trunk-mounted white box there is a reaction, perhaps aluminum oxidation, that is producing hydrogen at or near atmospheric pressure, which in turn is being purified and then is is being used in possibly a hydrogen-air fuel cell to generate the electricity for the drive motor,” he said. “Maybe, but I just don’t know.”
Automakers investigated a version of the Genepax solution when Daimler proposed that cars carry big tanks of methanol, then use an on-board reformer to extract hydrogen on the fly. It wasn’t economical, and confident reports that the automaker would have hundreds of thousands of those cars on the road by 2006 fell by the wayside. Maybe we’ll see commercial fuel-cell cars by 2015, but they’ll carry compressed hydrogen gas, not reformers or electrolyzers.
Note that although the post on cars that run on water is from this month, the gullible Reuters video is from 2008. Not much has been heard from Genepax since, though there was a brief vogue in homemade water bottle-based electrolyzers you could add to your car and instantly achieve a zillion mpg:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ0kjilQd1s
Here’s another naïve water-based power video, this time from Fox in 2006. Again, an automaker was supposedly negotiating with this backyard inventor, but nothing came of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKM4pb9Oxrg
And don’t get me started on air cars, which in the form of the perennially coming technology from French company MDI have gotten huge amounts of free publicity despite many years of failing to deliver on production plans. Here’s Popular Mechanics saying they are coming to our shores in 2009 or 2010, with maybe 1,000 miles of range. And for just $18,000! The last we heard, Indian automaker Tata was interested
Electric battery cars have range problems, and they’re expensive — but they actually work. We can buy them now in the form of cars like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt. They’re not vaporware. Trust me on the cars that run on air or water. You might as well harness a unicorn to your chariot and run with that.
For a little fun, watch this video for some step-by-step instruction on how you, too, can harness limitless power from an innocent bottle of water.
Jim Motavalli blogs for the Mother Nature Network and The New York Times.
More from the Mother Nature Network:
- Beekman Boys embrace wind energy
- EV charging stations now on Google Maps
- Toyota to restart hybrid output
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To decay or not to decay
Belle experiment
A typical B- → Ï„-ν candidate event at the Belle experiment. This candidate decays to an electron and missing energy/momentum.
Why do physicists study decay processes? Because they give us the pieces of a puzzle we can't fully reconstruct.
In particle physics, every particle dreams of losing weight and turning
into a bunch of lighter particles. There are no exceptions. This process
is called decaying.
Even the Higgs boson, that elusive goddamned residual particle of the
Higgs field, decays into W bosons, Z bosons, leptons, and photons. In
fact, each Z boson then decays to two leptons.
These processes are important because they allow physicists to
reconstruct objects that exist for too short a period for them to be
captured and studied. Instead, physicists study what the results of the
decay process are and then piece together what must have come before.
Going by observations: The heavier the particle, the stronger the desire
to decay into lighter particles. This is evinced by the particle’s
lifetime.
The most massive elementary particle is the top quark, one of six kinds, or flavours, of quarks. It weighs a whopping 172.9 ± 1.5 GeV/c2,
which is almost as heavy as an atom of tungsten! Its lifetime, however,
is a pitiful five trillion-trillionths of one second. (Here, GeV/c2 is a unit of mass: Einstein's famous equation states mass and energy are related as E = mc2, 'c' being the speed of light. So, m = E/c2.)
One of the least massive elementary particles, on the other hand, is the electron. It weighs a decent 0.511 MeV/c2, is perfectly stable, and never decays.
Decay to what and when
Because of their propensity for decaying, heavier particles will not
only decay faster but also in more combinations of lighter particles.
This is because the heavier you are, the more options there are of
particles lighter than you to choose from. Of course, there are limits
to how often one combination of particles is chosen to decay through
over another.
Moreover, heavier particles seldom come together to make up even heavier
particles. The top quark, for example, doesn’t even last long enough to
pair up with other quarks to form hadrons like protons and neutrons.
However, in the off-chance that two heavy particles have come together,
the composite particle is going to have a far shorter lifetime than
either of the constituents, and is going to decay through literally an
abundance of combinations. One example of such a particle that’s been in
the news is the B_c meson, first discovered by the Tevatron in 1995.
Mesons are particles that contain one quark and one antiquark.
Unfortunately, the B_c meson contains two of the heaviest flavours of
quarks (after the top quark) known – bottom and charm – and so its lifetime is abysmal…
But not abysmal enough for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The B_c meson decays
The LHCb detector on the LHC is specialised to study the bottom quark, which weighs around 4.2 GeV/c2. The other particle in the B_c meson, the charm antiquark, weighs 1.3 GeV/c2.
Note that these masses are approximates; a strange quantum mechanical principle called colour confinement has kept us from accurately measuring their masses.
Anyway, the B_c meson has access to a whopping 66 decay modes (PDF). However, only a few have been observed experimentally, such as the following:
1. B_c± → J/ψ (meson) + l± (lepton) + ν (neutrino) (link)
2. B_c± → J/ψ + Ï€± (pion) (link)
3. B_c± → J/ψ + K± (kaon)
The B_c’s decay to a J/ψ (pronounced “jay psi”) meson is favoured by experimental physicists because this particle consequently decays into two µ-mesons, i.e. muons, which are easy to detect and measure.
And via a paper submitted to the arXiv pre-print server on March 7, 2013, the LHCb collaboration announced another decay mode that it had spotted: B_c+ → ψ(2S) + Ï€+. Here, ψ(2S), also known as ψ(3686), is an excited state of the J/ψ meson.
The paper also revealed that a B_c’s decay to an excited J/ψ meson instead of a “normal” J/ψ meson happened fully one-fourth of the time. It also noted the emergence of another decay mode: B_c+ → J/ψ + Ï€+ + Ï€+ + Ï€-.
LHCb
data showing spikes for two decay processes of the B_c meson. The
height of each spike denotes the strength of the signal while its
narrowness brackets off the B_c meson's mass-range.
The mechanism of these decays is through what’s called the weak interaction because it transpires through the exchange of W± and Z bosons. What happens is one quark decays while the other remains spectator.
Why are these measurements important? As I stated earlier, the colour
confinement principle, which prevents quarks from being spotted in
isolation, keeps physicists from measuring their masses accurately. By
extension, the B_c meson’s mass also eludes capture.
But when they decay, physicists can zero in on those elusive masses by
noting how the decay process progresses. They use their knowledge of the
properties of lighter particles to piece together the properties of the
heavier particles.
For example, the decay mode B_c± → J/ψ + l± + ν was used in 1998 by scientists at Fermilab to determine the B_c+ meson’s mass to be 6.40 ± 0.39 (stat. error) ± 0.13 (sys. error) GeV/c2 and its lifetime to be around 0.46 picoseconds (i.e., 0.46 of one trillionth of one second).
These are important numbers because 1) they validate some hypotheses and
invalidate some others, 2) they indicate by how much our calculations
were off, and 3) they let us give values to things and find a way to
accommodate them in our formulae.
In fact, this is what most of experimental physics has to give
theoretical particle physics, and side by side, keep our curiosity
well-equipped to keep moving.
The world is not enough.
Are we to accelerate through space-time? Image: markhenspeter
If a Soviet astronomer named Nikolai Kardashev and an American physicist named Michio Kaku are correct, then interstellar travel, 400 yottawatts of energy, and a terrible space-crunch lie in humanity's next millennium.
I just came across an interesting concept called the Kardashev scale.
Using a simple formula, it defines how advanced a civilization is based
on its energy consumption on a scale of three possible values. These
values are demarcated as Types I, II and III.
Conceived by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964, and given a formula
by Carl Sagan in 1973, the scale places the human civilization as in
2008 at 0.717, and about 100-200 years away from attaining Type I
status according to an extrapolation by physicist Michio Kaku.
According to Kardashev, and later, Guillermo Lemarchand, a Type I
civilization consumes between 10E16 and 10E17 watts, a Type II, about
4E26 watts, and a Type III, about 4E37 watts. Ergo, successive stages
involve a hike in 10 orders of magnitude and then 11 orders of
magnitude, respectively.
These are exponentially massive jumps, as Kaku's estimation of few
thousand years and a million years as the consecutive attainment periods
evince.
What's really interesting about these definitions is that, on Earth,
humans are hardly the civilization to keep an eye out for. In 2008,
humans consumed about 15 terawatts while photosynthesis, the primary
biotic source of energy on the planet, produced about 1,800 terawatts of
energy, with single-celled microalgae being the most efficient among
the producers.
That places nature at 0.9 on the Kardashev scale.
Not that this comes as any kind of a surprise, but we are underdeveloped
in our own environment. Forget extra-terrestrial intelligentsia:
Diseases should be the stuff of Asimov-esque or Clarke-esque science
fiction! That we imagine we are ready to confront alien military technology and so scream high-energy radio signals into space in the hope of pinging another civilization is laughable.
Another interesting aspect comes to light if we addressed the human
biosphere as one system - conserving energy and momentum all the time
and everywhere - then a Type 0.717 civilization like ours must consume
and expel 15 terawatts. All that power cannot accumulate and then
disappear from our ergonomic accounts. All units must have a
contraentry. So, as a formula:
Consumed energy = Expelled energy
There are different ways of expelling this energy. As a simple example,
consider the running of a car: every second, some amount of petrol and
electrical energy from the battery goes into keep the car moving at some
speed. This energy is lost in transmission, combustion,
air-conditioning, overcoming friction, etc.
Similarly, at the moment, a planet of 7 billion humans consumes and expels 15 terawatts.
Consider if we were a Type III civilization, however. We'd have to
consume and expel about 4E37 watts, which is about the entire luminosity
of the Milky Way galaxy (100-400 billion stars). This means that, if
each human body consumed and expelled about 100 watts, i.e. the basal metabolic rate, then Earth would have to harbor... 400 million trillion quadrillion humans.
Obviously, the world is not enough.
One would imagine that as we progressed, we'd consume and expel energy
at higher efficiencies. As a result, fewer machines would be needed to
convert energy into useful energy. So, with the same quantity of
resources, we'd be able to produce more machines as time passes.
Consequently, the rate at which we consume energy will grow
exponentially, i.e. accelerate.
In fact, even as a Type II civilization, we'd need space for more than a
quadrillion humans. Thus, somewhere between the Type I and Type II
statuses, we'd have to figure out interstellar travel or simply go the Douglas Adams way and ship off all our telephone sanitizers into a random direction in space.
Footnote: If you're able to track down a reliable ballpark of how much
of the Earth's surface area is occupied by humans, then you'll be able
to calculate the Kardashev-scale's counterpart in occupation-space
scaling.
Earth Was Blasted With A Gamma Ray Burst During The Eighth Century
January 21, 2013
Image Caption: An artist's impression of the merger of two
neutron stars. Short duration gamma-ray bursts are thought to be caused
by the merger of some combination of white dwarfs, neutron stars or
black holes. Theory suggests that they are short lived as there is
little dust and gas to fuel an 'afterglow'. Credit: NASA/Dana Berry
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
According to a new study, black hole cosmic radiation blasted into the Earth back in the 8th century.
Japanese astrophysicist Fusa Miyake discovered last year clues for the strange event located in the rings of ancient cedar trees that dated back to either 774 or 775 AD.
Researchers teamed together to determine what had caused the surge in carbon-14 in the rings and found no evidence of a supernova, as they had expected.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle references the appearance of a “red crucifix” seen in the skies after sunset, but that took place in 776 AD, which was too late for when the tree rings show the event took place.
Scientists were also able to rule out a CME burst from the Sun, during which solar flares shoot out cosmic rays, sometimes towards Earth.
They wrote in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, instead, black holes may be the culprit behind the carbon-14 isotope surge in the rings. These isotopes are created when intense radiation hits the atoms in the upper atmosphere, which suggests a blast of energy had once hit Earth.
German-based scientists Valeri Hambaryan and Ralph Neuhauser say two black holes collided and then merged, releasing an intense, but extremely brief, burst of gamma rays during the time period. The same kind of bursts could have also taken place if two neutron stars, or white dwarf stars, collided.
“Gamma-ray bursts are very, very explosive and energetic events, and so we considered from the energy what would be the distance given the energy observed,” Neuhauser wrote in the journal.
They said the event could only have taken place at least 3,000 light years away from here, otherwise the planet would have been fried.
Also, if their theory is right, then it would help explain why there is no record of some brilliant event taking place in the sky, or evidence of any extinction event in Earth’s biodiversity during the time.
The authors suggest astronomers should look up to the sky for any evidence that may still exist today from the astronomical event in 774 or 775 AD.
Neuhauser said if a gamma-ray burst had been much closer to earth, then it would have caused significant harm to the biosphere.
“But even thousands of light years away, a similar event today could cause havoc with the sensitive electronic systems that advanced societies have come to depend on,” he wrote in the journal. “The challenge now is to establish how rare such carbon-14 spikes are, i.e. how often such radiation bursts hit the Earth.”
He said in the last 3,000 years, the maximum age of trees alive today, only one of these events has taken place. He added it was unlikely Earth would be seeing another one of these cosmic events soon.
According to a new study, black hole cosmic radiation blasted into the Earth back in the 8th century.
Japanese astrophysicist Fusa Miyake discovered last year clues for the strange event located in the rings of ancient cedar trees that dated back to either 774 or 775 AD.
Researchers teamed together to determine what had caused the surge in carbon-14 in the rings and found no evidence of a supernova, as they had expected.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle references the appearance of a “red crucifix” seen in the skies after sunset, but that took place in 776 AD, which was too late for when the tree rings show the event took place.
Scientists were also able to rule out a CME burst from the Sun, during which solar flares shoot out cosmic rays, sometimes towards Earth.
They wrote in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, instead, black holes may be the culprit behind the carbon-14 isotope surge in the rings. These isotopes are created when intense radiation hits the atoms in the upper atmosphere, which suggests a blast of energy had once hit Earth.
German-based scientists Valeri Hambaryan and Ralph Neuhauser say two black holes collided and then merged, releasing an intense, but extremely brief, burst of gamma rays during the time period. The same kind of bursts could have also taken place if two neutron stars, or white dwarf stars, collided.
“Gamma-ray bursts are very, very explosive and energetic events, and so we considered from the energy what would be the distance given the energy observed,” Neuhauser wrote in the journal.
They said the event could only have taken place at least 3,000 light years away from here, otherwise the planet would have been fried.
Also, if their theory is right, then it would help explain why there is no record of some brilliant event taking place in the sky, or evidence of any extinction event in Earth’s biodiversity during the time.
The authors suggest astronomers should look up to the sky for any evidence that may still exist today from the astronomical event in 774 or 775 AD.
Neuhauser said if a gamma-ray burst had been much closer to earth, then it would have caused significant harm to the biosphere.
“But even thousands of light years away, a similar event today could cause havoc with the sensitive electronic systems that advanced societies have come to depend on,” he wrote in the journal. “The challenge now is to establish how rare such carbon-14 spikes are, i.e. how often such radiation bursts hit the Earth.”
He said in the last 3,000 years, the maximum age of trees alive today, only one of these events has taken place. He added it was unlikely Earth would be seeing another one of these cosmic events soon.
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