Interstellar Gas Protection Against Grb's?, Gamma Rays from WR-104

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080310/sc_...tfloRcsItcE1vAI

No mention about whether interstellar medium could provide some protection. It seems feasible because there is so much interstellar distance that may be filled with gas.

But would there be anything thick enough between us and it to lessen the gamma rays? It's one thing for our atmosphere to protect us some, but I would expect that there wouldn't be much out there between us and it, otherwise they would have mentioned it.

- Gehn

There is plenty of interstellar gas; normally they experience heating and shock wave and element enrichment from the supernovae. I think they will offer some blocking but obviously not 100%.

Interestingly solar flares were among the earliest found sources of gamma rays. So close yet their danger to Earth seems downplayed compared to the more recent hype about Gamma Ray Bursts.

Indeed, the afterglow seen after GRBs collide with interstellar gas is already observed.

The source even contains the remark about the Sun's 10 billion year life energy compressed into seconds, which the SPACE.com used to sensationalize the story.

I would expect that there wouldn't be much out there between us and it, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to see it.

This perception is wrong. The interstellar medium is largely transparent at most of the wavelengths used to see stars. Certain wavelength absorptions are necessary to detect hydrogen for example. It is weak absorption due to the superlow density of the gas.

Hydrogen absorption at short wavelengths is not negligible, it is usually considered significant.

Please continue with the subject topic however the topic title gave me an idea. There is a lot of space-junk the size of baseballs floating in space. How to make it re-enter. By launching in a rocket a blob of 100 tonnes of water in the same orbit as the space junk. Should a base ball sized piece of junk intersect hitting the blob of water the suden impact would bring the piece into below orbit velocity. However it would take a long tome to make outer-space clean and safe by any means from floating chunks that could shred an astronaut doing space walk.

Please continue with your topic. (I thought it read portection agaist garbage)