How safe are we in the universe?

A supernova is a spectacular and very destructive cosmic event, which is why it is interesting that we ask ourselves how far away we should be from a dying star to start worrying. In 2016, German researchers from the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Berlin Institute of Technology calculated that a supernova explosion less than 25 light years away from Earth would trigger a mass extinction and the damage would be progressively reduced up to 65 light years, beyond that we would have exceeded the risk area, so 65 light years could be said to be the safety distance. We can be calm about that distance, we can say that we are quite sure, firstly because scientists can calculate the energy emitted by a supernova and how that energy dissipates with distance, and secondly because more and more evidence of the effect on the land of supernovae that occurred in the past.

Because in the journey of the solar system through the galaxy we have sometimes passed through very dangerous regions, for example, the explosion of a nearby supernova is one of the explanations that scientists give to the event of the great extinction of the Ordovician, some 440 million years ago. of years. It was a horrible cataclysm that ended with 85% of the existing species, it is one of the theories that exist, unfortunately that happened a long time ago and we have a few tests to confirm it.

What there is more data about is the last nearby supernova that the earth suffered, it has been investigated by scientists from the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Berlin Institute of Technology, according to their analyzes 2.2 million years ago a star that was between 194 and 424 light years from us it exploded, leaving a chemical signature in the sediments of the ocean floor. It must have been a spectacular event, but there is no data indicating that it was a problem for the life forms of the time, there is no record of an extinction more than 2.2 million years ago, the only thing notable from that time was the appearance of the homo habilis one of our ancestors whose name derives from his ability to make tools. Currently, luckily we do not have any dying stars less than 65 light-years away, although recent studies have confirmed that the region through which the solar system is passing on its journey through the milky way is an ancient battlefield with remnants of supernovae that exploded millions of years ago, if we had arrived earlier, the earth would have had a very hard time. Whatever happens when that big flash in the sky happens, whether it's next year or thousands of years from now, those supernovae will surely be a grandiose spectacle that people on earth will be able to see from a safe distance.

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