The Day Earth Survived Its Greatest Stellar Attack -Ever (A Weekend Classic)

www.dailygalaxy.com...

Quote from source:
It came suddenly from the distant reaches of the Constellation Sagittarius, some 50,000 light years away. For a brief instant, a couple of tenths of a second, on December 27, 2004 an invisible burst of energy the equivalent of half a million years of sunlight shone on Earth. Many orbiting satellites electronics were zapped and the Earth's upper atmosphere was amazingly ionized from a massive hit of gamma ray energy.

The source of the invisible attack was a rare magnetar SGR 1806-20 on the other side of the Milky Way. These soft gamma ray repeaters, SGRs, occur when twisted magnetic fields attempt to re-align themselves and crack the magetar's crust releasing the awesome burst or pulse of energy with a death-zone of a few light years. Magnetars have magnetic fields 1000 times those of ordinary pulsars -so powerful as to be lethal at a distance of 1000 kilometers.

I personally love Supernova's. I think it is so interesting that is where all of our elements come from, and mostly us as well. I also found it neat that we have had a soft gamma ray burst hit Earth before. Maybe this information will show people that if a supernova explodes it is not all gloom and doom.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

reply to post by predator0187


Interesting subject for sure. I think the title of the article is sensationalist and misleading though.

Firstly, no super-nova is ever going to destroy Earth, although it's possible that they could harm life and even perhaps cause extinctions in the worst cases.

Secondly, "greatest ever"?! The title of this article is laughable for that alone!

GRBs have hit us since long before humans were around, and some would have been much more powerful/closer than the particular GRB they mention.

I also found it neat that we have had a soft gamma ray burst hit Earth before.

They hit Earth all the time... otherwise we might not know about them, but most are so far away they are faint and hard to detect.

Far from being gloom and doom, I think supernovae are some of the most beautiful things in our universe


Source: NASA

yeah but this wasnt a supernova it was a magatar