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# Title: The threat to life from Eta Carinae and gamma ray bursts

Abstract: Eta Carinae, the most massive and luminous star known in our galaxy, is rapidly boiling matter off its surface. At any time its core could collapse into a black hole, which may result in a gamma-ray burst (GRB) that can devastate life on Earth. Auspiciously, recent observations indicate that the GRBs are narrowly beamed in cones along the rotational axis of the progenitor star. In the case of Eta Carinae the GRBs will not point to us, but will be ravaging to life on planets in our galaxy that happen to lie within the two beaming cones. The mean rate of massive life extinctions by jets from GRBs, per life-supporting planet in galaxies like ours, is once in 100 million years, comparable to the rate of major extinctions observed in the geological records of our planet. GRB extinctions also provide an answer to Fermi's question about alien visitors: Where are they?''
 Comments: Submitted for publication in PRL Subjects: Astrophysics (astro-ph); High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) Cite as: arXiv:astro-ph/0110162 (or arXiv:astro-ph/0110162v1 for this version)

## Submission history

From: Arnon Dar [view email]
[v1] Mon, 8 Oct 2001 19:05:09 GMT (11kb)
[v2] Mon, 3 Jun 2002 13:23:42 GMT (23kb)

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