Channel 4's Alternative Election 2010 was a great way to pass the first three hours of election night, especially because during this period absolutely nothing happens. Unless you count Labour's victory in its stronghold Sunderland as a surprise.
At one point Jimmy Carr interviewed Brian Cox, the former band member of D:Ream which was responsible for the New Labour 'Things Can Only Get Better' back in 1997. He's also a highly respected particle physicist who spends a lot of time in the Large Hadron Collider and making documentaries about our solar system.
One thing I was surprised and slightly disturbed to learn about him was how excitable he sounded about the several ways nature could wipe out our species. Asked to list the top five threats to humanity he reeled off in ascending order supervolcanoes, plague, supernovas, asteroids and finally our own stupidity.
As he was outlining why a supervolcano in Indonesia, which erupted 70,000 years ago leaving India coated in ash and our species' breeding population at a measly 1,000, could well be set to blow again, the glint in his eye made me wonder whether how keen he was to witness the event in his lifetime.
When he got to the Bettlejuice supernova , which he said would wipe out all life on earth if it was pointing towards us at the time it imploded, I decided to do a bit of further research (ie. scan a few paragraphs on wikipedia). I then understood the glint in his eye: this stuff is simply fascinating.
A supernova is when a large star explodes unleashing a burst of radiation so bright it outshines the entire galaxy before fading from view over several weeks or months. Such an explosion is so powerful it can release more energy than our sun is expected to emit over its whole life span. They occur on average every 50 years in the Milky Way galaxy, which in astrophysical terms is very rare.
So how would these exploding stars threaten our existence down here on comfy and warm planet Earth? Well it's only 'near-Earth' supernovas - sorry, supernovae - that we have to worry about, although this translates as anything up to 3,000 light years away. Oh dear.
One such candidate is red giant Betelgeuse, a mere 640 light years from Earth. It is only a few million years old, a spring chicken for a star of its size, but has evolved rapidly because of its high mass. As a result it could well supernova in the next millenium, if it hasn't already.
If it does it would release a torrent of Gamma rays which would destroy our precious ozone layer, leaving us at the mercy to harmful cosmic and solar radiation. Thankfully Betelgeuse should fire off its lethal Gamma rays in a safe direction due to the angle of its axis. I hope it stays that way.
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