Artist’s illustration of a gamma-ray burst. Energy from the explosion is beamed into two narrow, oppositely directed jets. Credit: NASA/Swift/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith and John Jones
Sometimes when a star collapses into a supernova, it releases gamma-ray bursts GRBs which last just a few seconds, but during that time they can release as much energy as the Sun will produce in its entire lifetime. They are so intense that, if pointed at the Earth from even the most distant edge of our galaxy, they could easily cause a mass extinction. It’s thought that a gamma-ray burst may have caused the Ordovician extinction around 440 million years ago, which wiped out 85% of all species at the time.
Clearly, the farther away a planet is from gamma-ray bursts, the better its chances of harboring advanced for...
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