[callisto]

Below was posted on SlashDot and Rense.com. It appears to be written by Karin Sandstrom.

Update On 'Threatening' Supernova
New Scientist Story
From Karin Sandstrom
Re: The New Scientist Article
5-25-2
Hi,

I'm Karin, the one quoted in this article as having discovered the supernova progenitor. I just wanted to let you all know to pay very little attention to the article. The reporter has taken one fact: that this might be a good candidate for a Type Ia supernova, and constructed a big mess out of it. I am very embarassed by this so I just wanted to clear up a few things.

First, I did NOTHING in the discovery process. I was just writing my senior thesis on white dwarfs and happened to study this system. It was discovered in 1993 by two separate groups of scientists (Landsman et al 1993, and Wonnacott et al 1993) They found the mass to be 1.15 solar masses, which is relatively large for a white dwarf star, but not the "just shy" of the Chandrasekhar limit that the reporter says. It is 0.3 times the mass of the sun shy of the limit, and that is a lot of mass. Lots and lots of people have studied this system since then, and many have commented on its possibilities for a supernova. All that I did in this story is to mention the system to a scientist here at Harvard who happens to simulate the evolution of a binary system towards a supernova and then mention in in a public talk about my thesis when a New Scientist reporter happened to be in the audience. The reporter got very excited and wrote this article, and left out the actual work that is being done on the evolutionary scenarios to sensationalize the possibility of a near earth supernova.

Second, what we have found, if anything, is that by the time that the white dwarf star has accreted enough mass from its companion to exceed the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses, it will be at least 10 kiloparsecs from earth, which is well on its way to the other side of the galaxy. The star will not pose any threat at all to earth. This is also hundreds of millions to billions of years in the future. I think the interesting part of this story is the terrible state of scientific news reporting in some popular journals. We discussed these problems extensively with the reporter and they were completely disregarded in the final version. Be on the lookout for our letter to the editor if you are interested. If anyone would like to know more about this, I'd be happy to explain what we really think is going on...unless you are a reporter, in which case don't bother...I'm done with them.

Thanks, Karin Sandstrom

[oust the louse]

How uncharacteristic for a reporter to not give all the facts.Most reporters do their homework and get all information correctly before going to print(sarcasm).We'll have to give this fellow a pass for being so excited about something happening in about a gazzillion years.Total bonehead...he'll get a good job with L.A Times or maybe the N.Y Times soon.I hear this type of reporting is the training for the big job....

[Doc On The Bay]

Now THAT was one of the BEST, MOST REASONED technological rebuttal posts I have EVER SEEN on FR!!

KUDO's!!

Doc

[Ahban]

I have heard reports that Earth is already on the road to becoming uninhabitable by humans due to the CO2-O2 cycle breaking down.

The short version is that plate tectonics combines with weather to keep temperatures between boiling and freezing points of water over the very long term. In Earth's early history, when the sun was much more feeble, there was much more CO2 in the atmosphere.

According to the article I read, or heard, the sun was already hot enough that critical amounts of CO2 will have to be removed from the atmosphere just to keep temps from soaring and oceans from boiling away. Soon, the Earth will remove so much CO2 that plant life will be reduced. Long before the sun goes to Red Giant stage, advandced life on Earth will be blotted out. The article said this was already beginning to happen, and that we don't have 4.5 billion years, but much closer to 4.5 THOUSAND years, before this becomes a noticiable and increasingly serious problem.

[DemoSmear]

Thanks for setting the record straight, in other words this is cheese.

Or A KORANS DR MINTS, which is what Karin Sandstrom's name comes out to playing with the anagram server. ;)

[sphinx]

Re: Karin's letter. You are too trusting. Karin is evidently part of the coverup. I wonder who got to her. Now I am really worried.