- #1
Strato Incendus
- 184
- 23
There have been quite a few threads on gamma-ray bursts already, so I’ll make this one as specific as I need it for my WIP sci-fi story:
Can a gamma-ray burst that affects the entire solar system, among others, damage the majority (if not all) devices capable of interstellar communication? For my story, it doesn’t need to eliminate all conversations via mobile phone on Earth etc. — it only needs to do enough damage to the communication systems within the solar system for the crew of my interstellar spaceship to lose all contact with Earth, and assume the worst has happened to humanity, given they’re no longer receiving signals.The other option would be for the interstellar slowboat to still be in the line of fire of the gamma-ray burst. So that it’s the ship’s communication systems that get fried, rather than those of Earth. I think we once briefly discussed already what would happen to a spaceship if it were in the area of effect. As far as I recall, it wouldn’t necessarily be lethal to everyone inside — given the ship needs lots of shielding against all kinds of radiation anyway — but it could damage the ship’s communication systems.
With the second scenario, normally the crew wouldn’t jump from “we can no longer communicate with Earth, because our own communication systems failed” to “we must wonder whether humanity on Earth has gone extinct”. In the event of the predicted gamma-ray burst, however (the prediction being explicitly the reason the interstellar ship leaves Earth in the first place), the thing that robs the ship of its communication systems would simultaneously also have the power to plausibly wipe out a whole lot of the higher life forms on Earth.
My potential alternative to disrupt electronic communications — a particularly powerful solar flare — would neither be powerful enough to do much other damage to Earth, nor would it affect any of the other colonised planets or moons within the solar system. So even if the crew of the interstellar ship observes the sun lighting up as the solar flare occurs (much like we can observe solar flares on Proxima Centauri), this wouldn’t give them reason to assume humanity at large may have been wiped out.We’ve discussed the choice between the solar flare and the gamma-ray burst before, but without this specific angle (the old thread is closed by now). The gamma-ray burst is set up in the very first chapter — the reader may perceive it as mere background information for why the ship originally left Earth; or they may perceive it as a Chekhov’s gun, and therefore fully expect the gamma-ray burst to go off at a later point in the story. The solar flare would therefore be a twist, without retconning the more general idea behind both the GRB and the flare, namely, “the universe has lots of things in store that could harm us” (the first chapter also mentions how Apophis ultimately impacted Earth, for example).
Basically, the conundrum from a storytelling perspective is that the gamma-ray burst feels subjectively more probable (due to being a Chekhov’s gun), but is statistically and objectively much less probable than a solar flare.
Since I still do need the crew of the ship to believe at this plotpoint that humanity back on Earth may have gone extinct — more importantly, that they on the ship might therefore be the last survivors, and hence have a duty to complete the mission — I’m a little more inclined to go with the gamma-ray burst now than I was the last time I brought up this point. Last time, one user in particular advised me to avoid “dual armageddons”.
This again suggests to me that the reader might subjectively consider the gamma-ray burst more likely than the solar flare, given the setup — even though, in the real world, the exact opposite is the case.
The gamma-ray burst would fulfil several narrative purposes here: Fire off Chekhov’s gun; give the crew a reason to assume they might be the last human beings alive; thereby upping the stakes etc. The crew would also only find out 22 years later (by the end of the trilogy), after Earth has repaired its communication systems, that humanity is still alive, after all. That’s because, at the time of the event, they’re 10 light years from Earth; when they start getting signals from Earth again, they’re 12 light years away, meaning that’s the time the signals from Earth need to get there.
Problems with this idea are:
- Either, I need to assert that people on Earth needed 10 years to restore their communication devices, before they started sending signals to the ship again of their own accord.
- Or, I would need to claim that the people on Earth never considered the ship might wonder whether they had gone extinct. So it is only after the ship has sent a message back on Earth, to test whether anyone is still around (that message takes 10 years to get there, at light speed), that people on Earth feel the necessity to inform them they’re still around (the message back now takes 12 years). This seems hardly believable, though, since the ship has been receiving such long-distance messages before. Why would people on Earth suddenly stop sending them? Unless of course their own communication systems broke down.
- Third option, it is indeed the ship’s communication systems that get damaged — and they need 22 years to fix them. Earth could keep sending messages the entire time, but the ship wouldn’t be able to pick them up. Hardly believable, though, given the level of the ship’s other technology.
That’s a general concern, since e.g. radio communication, for all I know, is a way we make ourselves known to space “automatically” — not something we’d have to actively send somewhere consciously (even though doing so can of course be helpful in SETI). And by today’s standards, radio waves aren’t a particularly advanced technology.
Hence, while communication between Earth and an interstellar ship takes longer and longer with every passing year of the ship’s journey, disrupting this communication entirely may not be as easy as I would need it to be for this plot point to work.
So in short: Could a gamma-ray burst disrupt all communication between the solar system and an interstellar ship for an extended period of time?
Can a gamma-ray burst that affects the entire solar system, among others, damage the majority (if not all) devices capable of interstellar communication? For my story, it doesn’t need to eliminate all conversations via mobile phone on Earth etc. — it only needs to do enough damage to the communication systems within the solar system for the crew of my interstellar spaceship to lose all contact with Earth, and assume the worst has happened to humanity, given they’re no longer receiving signals.The other option would be for the interstellar slowboat to still be in the line of fire of the gamma-ray burst. So that it’s the ship’s communication systems that get fried, rather than those of Earth. I think we once briefly discussed already what would happen to a spaceship if it were in the area of effect. As far as I recall, it wouldn’t necessarily be lethal to everyone inside — given the ship needs lots of shielding against all kinds of radiation anyway — but it could damage the ship’s communication systems.
With the second scenario, normally the crew wouldn’t jump from “we can no longer communicate with Earth, because our own communication systems failed” to “we must wonder whether humanity on Earth has gone extinct”. In the event of the predicted gamma-ray burst, however (the prediction being explicitly the reason the interstellar ship leaves Earth in the first place), the thing that robs the ship of its communication systems would simultaneously also have the power to plausibly wipe out a whole lot of the higher life forms on Earth.
My potential alternative to disrupt electronic communications — a particularly powerful solar flare — would neither be powerful enough to do much other damage to Earth, nor would it affect any of the other colonised planets or moons within the solar system. So even if the crew of the interstellar ship observes the sun lighting up as the solar flare occurs (much like we can observe solar flares on Proxima Centauri), this wouldn’t give them reason to assume humanity at large may have been wiped out.We’ve discussed the choice between the solar flare and the gamma-ray burst before, but without this specific angle (the old thread is closed by now). The gamma-ray burst is set up in the very first chapter — the reader may perceive it as mere background information for why the ship originally left Earth; or they may perceive it as a Chekhov’s gun, and therefore fully expect the gamma-ray burst to go off at a later point in the story. The solar flare would therefore be a twist, without retconning the more general idea behind both the GRB and the flare, namely, “the universe has lots of things in store that could harm us” (the first chapter also mentions how Apophis ultimately impacted Earth, for example).
Basically, the conundrum from a storytelling perspective is that the gamma-ray burst feels subjectively more probable (due to being a Chekhov’s gun), but is statistically and objectively much less probable than a solar flare.
Since I still do need the crew of the ship to believe at this plotpoint that humanity back on Earth may have gone extinct — more importantly, that they on the ship might therefore be the last survivors, and hence have a duty to complete the mission — I’m a little more inclined to go with the gamma-ray burst now than I was the last time I brought up this point. Last time, one user in particular advised me to avoid “dual armageddons”.
This again suggests to me that the reader might subjectively consider the gamma-ray burst more likely than the solar flare, given the setup — even though, in the real world, the exact opposite is the case.The gamma-ray burst would fulfil several narrative purposes here: Fire off Chekhov’s gun; give the crew a reason to assume they might be the last human beings alive; thereby upping the stakes etc. The crew would also only find out 22 years later (by the end of the trilogy), after Earth has repaired its communication systems, that humanity is still alive, after all. That’s because, at the time of the event, they’re 10 light years from Earth; when they start getting signals from Earth again, they’re 12 light years away, meaning that’s the time the signals from Earth need to get there.
Problems with this idea are:
- Either, I need to assert that people on Earth needed 10 years to restore their communication devices, before they started sending signals to the ship again of their own accord.
- Or, I would need to claim that the people on Earth never considered the ship might wonder whether they had gone extinct. So it is only after the ship has sent a message back on Earth, to test whether anyone is still around (that message takes 10 years to get there, at light speed), that people on Earth feel the necessity to inform them they’re still around (the message back now takes 12 years). This seems hardly believable, though, since the ship has been receiving such long-distance messages before. Why would people on Earth suddenly stop sending them? Unless of course their own communication systems broke down.
- Third option, it is indeed the ship’s communication systems that get damaged — and they need 22 years to fix them. Earth could keep sending messages the entire time, but the ship wouldn’t be able to pick them up. Hardly believable, though, given the level of the ship’s other technology.
That’s a general concern, since e.g. radio communication, for all I know, is a way we make ourselves known to space “automatically” — not something we’d have to actively send somewhere consciously (even though doing so can of course be helpful in SETI). And by today’s standards, radio waves aren’t a particularly advanced technology.
Hence, while communication between Earth and an interstellar ship takes longer and longer with every passing year of the ship’s journey, disrupting this communication entirely may not be as easy as I would need it to be for this plot point to work.
So in short: Could a gamma-ray burst disrupt all communication between the solar system and an interstellar ship for an extended period of time?