Oleg Zabluda's blog
Friday, April 27, 2012
 
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.

WR 104 is a Wolf-Rayet class OB mag 13.5 star discovered in 1998, located 8 Kly years from Earth in Sagittarius, more or less toward the center of our galaxy. So what, you say? Some optical measurements indicate that WR 104's rotational axis is aligned within 16° of Earth. When she blows, GRB is going straight for us. And 8Kly is a bit too close for comfort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WR_104
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/03/03/wr-104-a-nearby-gamma-ray-burst/

There are plenty of stars, much closer to us, which are about to go GRB (Betelgeuse being the closest at 643±146 ly) , but this WR 104 is the closest so aligned.

If you are not afraid yet, more food for thought: in 2008, a GRB 7.5Gly away, i.e. before Solar Sytem was born, was visible to the naked eye at mag 5.8 for 30 sec in Bootes at 23:31:09 PDT on March 19, 2008. I could have been looking at it at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRB_080319B
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/03/20/naked-eye-visible-grb/

If that doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/03/03/wr-104-a-nearby-gamma-ray-burst/

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