• exscape@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    My favorite fact from that article (indeed xkcd) isn’t about neutrinos though, but this:

    Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina:

    1. A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or
    2. The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball?

    The answer is the supernova, by 9 orders of magnitude. So the supernova at the Sun’s distance is about a billion times brighter than a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball.

    https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/

      • exscape@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        The neutrinos? According to the article you’d probably be inside the star to be at the neutrino-lethal distance, so you’ll clearly be dead before it even goes supernova. :-)

        If it were still lethal at a distance you could survive, my slightly informed guess is that it could matter, as AFAIK supernovas tend to release the neutrinos before most of the light.
        However I have no idea for how long the main part of the neutrino flood last or how long it’ll take to kill you, could be anything from less than a second to minutes or hours, at which time you’d certainly be dead from the rest of the supernova.