Paul Sutter - How to die in space: A Journey Through Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena

HOW TO DIE IN SPACE

Pegasus Books Ltd.

148 W. 37th Street, 13th Floor

New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2020 by Paul M. Sutter, PhD

First Pegasus Books cloth edition June 2020

Interior design by Maria Fernandez

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

Jacket Design: Faceout Studio, Tim Green

Imagery: Shutterstock and Arcangel

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-64313-438-3

ISBN: 978-1-64313-439-0 (eBook)

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

www.pegasusbooks.us

To the mothers, mine and yours:

We must venture into the endless void

Never at rest, facing the dangers of our universe

Thank you, for teaching us how home should feel.

Dedication, Rhyme of the Ancient Astronomer

But which is worse

to die lost and alone

or surrounded by the people

you were trying to leave behind?

Rhyme of the Ancient Astronomer

Y oure not going to make it in space.

I said, no.

Look, just because youre a child of Mother Nature, it doesnt mean she has to love you.

She can pull you below an event horizon, never to be seen by a living soul again. She can slam a mountain into you at ten thousand miles per hour, smashing you into dust. She can bore you to death, forcing you to spend eon after endless eon just to hop to the next star system. She can even microwave you. Literally cook you with microwaves. She can dose you with so much radiation that if youre supremely lucky youll only get aggressive cancer. She can you get the idea.

Space is nasty.

Its a rough universe out there, and Im surprised that anybody, let alone you, would want to explore it. Sure, its full of wonders: lacy tendrils of gas stretching for light-years, stellar explosions that can be seen from across the universe, dead and decaying stars filled with matter in the strangest of states, the list goes on. A beautiful and wonderful cosmos, full of colors, motion, and vitality. Staggeringly big, room enough for everyone. Full of enough surprises and mysteries to satisfy generations worth of curiosity-seekers.

Lured by the wonders, eager young explorers go out ill-equipped and unprepared. They go off to hunt for the strange, the unique, the exotic. To dance through nebulae and surf on waves of gravity. To attempt to fathom the most closely held secrets of nature. To go and go and go, never looking back. Hundreds of billions of stars in every galaxy; hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe.

They go to see the stars. Factories of fusion. Fountains of creation. Watchful guardians of the deep.

They go to see the nebulae. Tombs of the fallen. Birthplaces of light. Forges of the elements.

They go to see the unseeable. Whispers of distant collisions. Secrets written in strange matter. The great expanse of nothing.

They go to see the extreme. Gateways to new universes. Artifacts of the ancient cosmos. A new friend.

They go to see. To explore, to study, to observe, to witness.

They meet their ends much too soon. Caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole. Struck by a rogue comet. Blasted with radiation from the outburst on the surface of a star. Tragedies, all of them. Senseless and unnecessary.

So here I am. My first priority is to warn you off the whole escapade altogether. Find a planet, find a rock, call it home. Raise a farm. Raise some kids. You cant get rid of all the dangers in your life, but you sure can avoid the most obvious ones. Put some dirt under your feet and some air over your head. Get yourself a nice steady star with billions of years left of heat and light and warmth, and a nice steady planet with plenty of liquid water. Get a hobby, and get your mind off space.

Buy a telescope. Enjoy it from afar.

But youre not going to listen to me, are you? Youre going to go there, arent you? Youre not like the others. Youre not the stupid one, or the ignorant one, or the lazy one. Youll be clever and watchful and careful. Youll come back home with tales of wonder and awe.

You think you have one up on Mother Nature, do you? Just remember that she has a few billion years of experience.

So, second priority. If youre not going to stay put, I might as well tell you about some of the dangers youll be facing. Ill assume youve solved the simple stuff, like how to actually get up into space, how to bring enough food and water and air with you, and how to navigate and travel. Thats all just engineering problems, really, and not my department.

My department is physicsastrophysics. That means figuring out how stuff works up in space. And Ill be spilling a lot of astrophysics all over your nice clean new dreams. Sometimes Ill be brief, and sometimes Ill need to slow down and dig into the dirt. This isnt just a list of hazards but an explanation of why theyre hazardous.

I would prefer that you end up not only alive, but also smart.

What Im writing represents the latest scientific knowledge acquired from decades, and in some cases centuries, of research from Earth scientists. That means that a good chunk of it is right, but some of it might be wrong. Thats just the way it is. Ill try my best to let you know when somethings known for sure and when somethings a little bit suspector even downright speculative. Again, use your judgment. I recommend treating everything I say as the Gospel Truth, at least for safetys sake.

You can never be too careful, out there in the void.

This will not be an exhaustive list, either. I have a deadline to write this, after all, and I cant wait around for every new discovery or piece of knowledge to make its way into these chapters. Ill hit the most obvious dangers and a few lesser known second-stringers. There are of course more threats out there, and as smart as I am Im not omniscient. Thats just the way the universe works, pal.

Most importantly, and I cant say this strongly enough: I will not be held liable for any inaccuracies, mistakes, or incomplete knowledge in the following pages. I will of course strive to minimize all such things, but nobodys perfect. Even me.

Travel at your own risk. If I say a star in a particular stage of evolution should be stable for another million years, and instead it goes supernova, dont blame me, blame physics. The universe is a complicated place, and the physics Im about to describe isnt always simple.

I dont know how far youll get or what youll eventually encounter in your adventures. Our universe is in a constant state of flux; a big, messy existence. Things will catch you off guard. The cosmos will surprise you.

You have been warned.

So let us begin.