Thursday, April 20, 2006

One less thing to worry about

ScienceDaily: Deadly Astronomical Event Not Likely To Happen In Our Galaxy, Study Finds

Seems death of most life on earth by an unexpected gamma ray burst (GRB) from a nearby star is rather unlikely;

The astronomers determined that the odds of a GRB occurring in a galaxy like that one to be approximately 0.15 percent. And the Milky Way's metal content is twice as high as that galaxy, so our odds of ever having a GRB would be even lower than 0.15 percent.

"We didn't bother to compute the odds for our galaxy, because 0.15 percent seemed low enough," Stanek said.

He figures that most people weren't losing sleep over the possibility of an Earth-annihilating GRB. "I wouldn't expect the stock market to go up as a result of this news, either," he said. "But there are a lot of people who have wondered whether GRBs could be blamed for mass extinctions early in Earth's history, and our work suggests that this is not the case."

No comments: