7 Years Ago, Earth Nearly Doomsday

On December 27, 2004, suddenly a burst of energy invisible hit Earth. He is expected to come from a considerable distance, ie distance from the constellation Sagittariusthat reach about 50 thousand light years, or more than 473 thousand trillion miles.

Explosion and lacing was first detected gamma rays by NASA's Swift satellite. As forastronomers, the observation of these events provide the most detailed examples of the burst of energy ever recorded in history.


Although the burst of energy that only attack for about 0.2 secondsbut the energy is just as much to the energy of sunlight shining on the Earth up to 500 thousand yearsold.

As a result of devastating blows gammar beam energy, a lot of electronic satellitesorbiting the Earth were damagedEarth's upper atmosphere is also experiencingtremendous ionization.

After further investigation, astronomers discovered that the source of the attack wasa rare magnetar SGR 1806-20 is located on the other side of the Milky Way.

Soft gamma ray repeaters (SGRs) This occurs when the magnetic field beingtangled in trying to straighten her back and broke the crust of the magnetarAs a result, there was a burst of energy by turning off zone that can reach several light years.

Magnetar's magnetic field alone has 1,000-fold compared to pulsars (neutron starsthat emit high bermedan magnet electromagnetic radiation) used. He is very strongand could lead to the destruction of anything within a distance of 1,000 kilometers in the vicinity.

"The Swift satellite was designed to find a burst of unusual," said Neil Gehrels,researchers from the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, quoted by the DailyGalaxyDecember 27, 2011"We really hit by a landslide with this one,he said.

Luckily for Earth, the distance of the source of the blast so farAnd gamma-ray burst(GRB) next to come, probably comes from thousands of light years from Earth.

This phenomenon is also likely occur only once in a decadeThat is, GRB that hitEarth's atmosphere in 2004 and is a very rare occurrence.(vvn)