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How Dangerous are Kilonovae?


Neutron stars' collisions create powerful explosions, a type of gamma-ray burst known as a kilonova. What would it be like to be too close to a kilonova? Work has been done to calculate the risk of being in the beam of a gamma-ray burst, but a new paper looks at what would happen if you were off the axis to a kilonova. Researchers calculated that X-rays would be lethal to 3 light years, gamma rays out 13 light years, and cosmic rays could kill you at 36 light-years.

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