Originally Posted by NinetyNine

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gigan...et-74161.shtml

It's not like it's impossible for events in one place to affect another place, even if they're far away.

Originally Posted by SaintHazard

You all are forgetting the biggest bullsh*t moment in that entire movie.

That'd be when Nero states that the Narada "went through the black hole."

"Went through the black hole."

What the f*ck?

You can't go "through" a black hole. It's not like a hole in a wall, where you can step through, and there are things on the other side.

A black hole is a collapsed star that maintains the same mass as the original star, but exponentially less volume, therefore exponentially more density. It's not a hole in the universe or anything stupid like that.

If you were to fly into a black hole, you'd simply be compressed to the point where states of matter no longer exist, and you, and your entire ship, would fill a space smaller than the head of a pin.

You wouldn't come out the other side.

Originally Posted by Rusty_Diodes

Oh, don't mis-understand-- I have no doubt the radiation would reach us 6,000 years later. My point is more related to how much would reach us. Consider that when something radiates in every possible direction in 3 dimensional space, the concentration of the radiation is reduced with distance at a geometric rate. To give a few examples:
The further you sit from a light bulb, the less light is reflected off the page of your book.
The further you drive from a radio tower, the harder it is to pick up the signal.
The further you are from a fireplace, the less heat radiation you feel on your skin.

Now consider the relative size of a hypernova, and the distance of 6,000 light years (35+ quadrillion miles). If I were to tell you that I dropped an A-Bomb on Mercury, and half of the life on terraformed Pluto was destroyed by the radiation, you may find that a bit hard to swallow as well. It's not that any radiation would be absorbed by the space in between- of course space doesn't absorb anything- but the radiation would be spreading at, quite literally, an astronomical rate.

Again, I'm not saying it isn't possible, nor that it didn't happen. I'm simply saying that an understanding of physics, geometry, and electromagnetic radiation does make the scenario seem a bit unlikely- at least, before running the numbers. I say this because I have a pretty good idea how big those numbers are, and how very, very quickly they will shrink when being divided geometrically over a distance of 6,000 light years.

In any case, I'm not disagreeing with you- merely expressing awe and wonder, and perhaps a bit of doubt. Doubt is fair though; after all, it is only a theory we are discussing anyway.

Originally Posted by Xiaodave

Think of it this way.

A star big enough to cause that size of nova is BIG and at 6000 light years distance it would easily be visible to the naked eye. So you are looking up in the night sky and enough radiation from this star reaches the tiny little spot on your retina responsible for vision every twelfth of a second for you to see it. And this is when that star is behaving itself.

When it goes nova it sends out a cataclysmic amount of high energy radiation for several months in every direction. If enough of its light is able to reach your eye in normal times, then in the supernova there will more than enough bathing every square millimeter of the earths atmosphere for long enough to destroy the ozone layer temporarily. And thats all it has to do, it takes care of the ozone layer over a few months and then our sun does the harder job of baking us all to death in the following years to decades.

Originally Posted by Ravenstein

So it's kinda like dousing a guy with a flamethrower and then throwing him in a snowbank overnight.

Originally Posted by Ravenstein

Actually, after the initial scorching of the surface by the burst of gamma and ultraviolet radiation, the loss of the ozone layer would result in long term global cooling for a few thousand years.

So it's kinda like dousing a guy with a flamethrower and then throwing him in a snowbank overnight.

Originally Posted by SaintHazard

Sounds like personal experience. Should we be worried? :p

Originally Posted by SaintHazard

Sounds like personal experience. Should we be worried? :p

Originally Posted by Ravenstein

Interestingly enough, it is not against any laws in the state of Indiana to own or operate a flamethrower.