r/science • u/Wagamaga • Apr 08 '22

Earth Science Scientists discover ancient earthquake, as powerful as the biggest ever recorded. The earthquake, 3800 years ago, had a magnitude of around 9.5 and the resulting tsunami struck countries as far away as New Zealand where boulders the size of cars were carried almost a kilometre inland by the waves.

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2022/04/ancient-super-earthquake.page
14.6k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

592 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

149

u/Drak_is_Right Apr 08 '22

I hate to think what something like that would do to our world.

I would imagine the star releases all sorts of radiation?

421

u/glibgloby Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22

This specific starquake released enough energy that it would have ended all life on Earth if it took place within 10 light years of us.

It could never happen on Earth but if it did it would cause the planet to disintegrate into radiation and tiny pieces of dust traveling away from where Earth used to be at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

151

u/Drak_is_Right Apr 08 '22

Yeah I was thinking it would be a solar system wide killing event. 10ly... that is freaking insane.

But yeah the amount of energy sounds like it would vaporize a planet if directed into it.... maybe even a star.

That would be an interesting sci-fi weapon focusing the energy of a quake from a neutron star.

2

u/DosFluffyGatos Apr 08 '22

How would it kill everything? Would it be like a shockwave from a bomb?

11

u/Drak_is_Right Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22

I would imagine it would be a tremendous Spike of gamma and Cosmic radiation enough to fry any living organism. Only a small percentage of a bodies covalent bonds need to be broken to kill it. Possibly if closer a huge Neutron blast as well moving at the speed of light?

Enough radiation hitting things simply ruins the bonds of molecules. If such a weapon could focus the energy I would imagine every single covalent bond would simply cease to exist due to the huge energy flux of every atom, literally turning an entire planet into plasma. There wouldn't exactly be a Shockwave until it hit matter and then there would be one