🚀 go-pugleaf

In article jbaez@banach.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
   bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:

   >Fortunately there are no stars less than a light-year away ....

   None that are going to go supernova, anyway.

   As Blair Houghton suggested, why don't we have some estimates about how
   far away a supernova has to be before it only gives you a bad sunburn?

I'm too lazy to work through the math again, but about two years ago, a fellow
came to talk here at Stanford's CSSA, about neutrino bursts from supernovae.
As one might imagine, a supernova produces a *lot* of neutrinos.

In fact, the guy did a back-of-the-viewgraph calculation of radiation damage
from neutrino flux, and determined that, if the Sun were a six solar
mass star (how's *that* for an oxymoron) and went supernova, and you were
standing on the far side of Pluto at the time, you'd *still* get more than 
the LD50 dose of neutrinos!

Now, that's a *lot* of neutrinos!
--
Craig DeForest:  zowie@banneker.stanford.edu  *or*  craig@reed.bitnet

"So, if you guys make a living looking at the SUN, why do you spend so much
        time at the SYNCHROTRON, working UNDERGROUND at NIGHT?"