- #1
Quotidian
- 98
- 14
Hi All - I am an as yet unpublished writer who is working up a science fiction story. I should qualify that by saying that the story I have in mind, is more like a 'science drama' than science fiction, per se, because it doesn't involve monstrous creatures from space, interstellar travel, and the like.
However one thing it does involve is a very large gamma-ray burst, something similar to that described in this BBC article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21082617
So, without giving away what this aspect of the story actually does, I want to explore a few ideas about this kind of phenomenon. One thing I want to say in this story, is that the burst hits Earth so hard that it fries every single radio-telescopic device that is pointing in its direction at the time it hits. As a result, it turns out to be extremely difficult to say much about what it actually was. Practically no data turns out to have been gathered about the event, because all of the instruments that might have captured that information had their dials blown off, so to speak.
I am also exploring the idea that one observatory did manage to capture at least some information about what happened, because it was pointed at an oblique angle to the band of radiation at the time. So it at least captured some information about the wavelength of the energy and the direction it came from.
Are these suggestions plausible? Not the kind of thing that any experienced physicist would immediately say 'well that could never happen'?
However one thing it does involve is a very large gamma-ray burst, something similar to that described in this BBC article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21082617
So, without giving away what this aspect of the story actually does, I want to explore a few ideas about this kind of phenomenon. One thing I want to say in this story, is that the burst hits Earth so hard that it fries every single radio-telescopic device that is pointing in its direction at the time it hits. As a result, it turns out to be extremely difficult to say much about what it actually was. Practically no data turns out to have been gathered about the event, because all of the instruments that might have captured that information had their dials blown off, so to speak.
I am also exploring the idea that one observatory did manage to capture at least some information about what happened, because it was pointed at an oblique angle to the band of radiation at the time. So it at least captured some information about the wavelength of the energy and the direction it came from.
Are these suggestions plausible? Not the kind of thing that any experienced physicist would immediately say 'well that could never happen'?