A beautiful pinwheel in space might one day blast Earth with death rays, scientists now report. Unlike the moon-sized Death Star from Star Wars, which has to get close to a planet to blast it, this blazing spiral has the potential to burn worlds from thousands of light-years away.
The Swift Space Laboratory -- a joint project between NASA, Britain, and Italy -- is the first satellite dedicated to probing the mysteries of gamma ray bursts.
A team of astrophysicists and palaeontologists says the pattern of one of Earth's worst mass extinctions resembles the expected effects of a nearby gamma-ray burst (GRB). Although other experts have greeted the idea with some scepticism, most agree that it deserves further investigation.
The good news is that we may not be alone in the universe. The reason why extraterrestrials haven't visited yet is because of a higher rate of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) during the past few hundred million years than now. The current rate of GRBs provides a window of opportunity (of several hundred million years) for species to develop into spacefaring civilizations. The bad news is the existence of GRBs, incredibly powerful explosions caused by collisions between collapsed stars that can 'cleanse' entire galaxies of life. Eternal pessimists are welcome to interpret both events as dire -- random, unstoppable galaxy-sterilizing gamma ray blasts and marauding extraterrestrial refugees, anxious to find new ozone rich environments.