Quote:Is the wave-front honestly going to be that intense from several hundred lightyears out?
As a rule of thumb you don't want to be within 50 light years of something like that if you're not a fan of irradiation.
Quote:Okay, in case no one gets it, using a FTL drive you can actually go to a point in the galaxy where the light emitted by a stellar phenomena like a nova is just about the get there, and then observe what happens. The idea here is to monitor the supernova from several different points in space to see the different stages of the supernova, more or less simutaneously. This would give us concrete data on how a supernova works within a few years zipping around the galaxy instead of remaining stationary and waiting centuries.
Well, generally if you're doing that you're a) assuming that the wavefront has already reached Earth without being observed (unlikely, as Betelgeuse is one of the most-observed stars in the sky) and b) you're travelling *away* from the nova in question.
If the star *hasn't* gone nova in the 420 years since the last light hit your scopes but you're *expecting* that it went nova at some point in the recent past, then the *last* thing you want to do is move *toward* the kill radius. That's plain *dumb*. Send probes, send lots of probes.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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