Just when you think you have all the options on this 2012 scenario figured out, along comes another weird catastrophe potential. Sometimes it"s just better to NOT know. Ignorance is bliss. Right? So, what"s up with this Wolf-Rayet star stuff? And more specifically WR104.
Wolf-Rayet stars (often referred to as WR stars) are evolved, massive stars that are losing their mass rapidly by means of a very strong stellar wind. A Wolf-Rayet star is the last step on the way to a supernova — the explosion of a star at the end of its life. It"s not good news that we have located 230 Wolf-Rayets are known in our own Milky Way Galaxy. The good news though is that the doomsday clock on these big berthas is a long ways down the road- way past 2012!
And more specifically, astronomers have discovered a spectacular rotating pinwheel system about 8,000 light years away which includes an unstable Wolf-Rayet star that could explode. Named WR104 eight years ago, it was discovered in the constellation Sagittarius by Sydney University astronomer Peter Tuthill. Wonder if Peter knows anything about Planet X as well? :-)
"Sometimes, supernovae like the one that will one day destroy WR104 focus their energy into a narrow beam of very destructive gamma-ray radiation along the axis of the system," he warns. "If such a "gamma-ray burst" happens, we really do not want Earth to be in the way."vEven a short gamma-ray burst at supernova strength could zap away half the Earth"s ozone layer, drastically increasing the amount of deadly space radiation that penetrates our atmosphere.
And you thought brown dwarfs were scary!
Who understands physics, astronomy, and such sciences? The Mayans seemingly knew nothing about the sciences, they just knew the universe. How does that work?
In many ways these Wolf-Raye stars are much like we humanoids, especially we Americans. WR stars begin life as cosmic titans, with at least 20 times the mass of the Sun. They live fast and die hard, exploding as supernova and blasting vast amounts of heavy elements into space for use in later generations of stars and planets. Live fast and die hard. What a theory.
What"s my other options?