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Stellar Explosion Is Most Distant Object Visible to Naked Eye:

A powerful stellar explosion that has shattered the record for the most distant object visible to the naked eye was detected by NASA’s Swift satellite on Wednesday.

The explosion, known as a gamma-ray burst, also ranks as the most intrinsically bright object in the universe ever observed by humans.

“It’s amazing — we’ve been waiting for a flash this bright from a gamma-ray burst ever since Swift began observing the sky three years ago, and now we’ve got one that is so bright that it was visible to the naked eye even though its source is half-way across the universe,” said David Burrows of Penn State University, who directs the continuing operation of Swift’s X-ray telescope and the analysis of the data it collects.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the universe since the Big Bang and occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. The stars’ cores collapse to form black holes or neutron stars and release an intense burst of high-energy gamma-rays and jets of energetic particles.

We’re lucky that this was the most distant object ever spotted. Because these things are bright. Extremely bright. Really really bright, is the point I’m trying to get across here. How bright? Well Burrows says that if one were to happen anywhere near us, even at midnight, the future would be so bright we’d all have to wear shades… at least for a minute or two: “If this burst had happened in our galaxy, it would have been shining brighter than the Sun for almost a minute — sunglasses would definitely be advised.”

Bright lights aside, gamma ray bursts can cause a lot of problems. As a matter of fact, they believe that one could have been responsible for one of Earth’s many mass extinctions in its history:

Research has been conducted to investigate the consequences of Earth being hit by a beam of gamma rays from a nearby (about 500 light years) gamma ray burst. This is motivated by the efforts to explain mass extinctions on Earth and estimate the probability of extraterrestrial life. A gamma ray burst at 6000 light years would result in mass extinction; a 1000 light year distant burst would be equivalent to a 100,000 megaton nuclear explosion. A burst 100 light years away would blow away the atmosphere, create tidal waves, and start to melt the surface of the Earth. If there could be a gamma ray burst as near as the Earth’s closest star, Alpha Centauri,at 4.3 lightyears distant, it would effectively incinerate the Earth.

100 light years isn’t exactly close… that means it’s so far away that if you were traveling at the speed of light it would take you 100 years to get there. It’s hard to think of something that far away as a “neighbor,” but like that hillbilly who decides to set off fireworks right next to his propane tank, we’re just a bright flash away from a fiery death.

Basically if a meteor doesn’t hit us, the super volcano under Yellowstone will get us… or we’ll get hit by a gamma ray burst… just another thing to worry about, right?

It just so happens that on the same day that science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke died, there were five gamma ray bursts sighted out there in the cosmos. The HAL 9000 was unavailable for comment.