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Star Quake

  • 25-02-2005 10:11pm
    #1
    Zillah
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,371 ✭✭✭✭


    Don't think this has been posted previously, so I'll give it a shot.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4278005.stm
    The flash of radiation on 27 December was so powerful that it bounced off the Moon and lit up the Earth's atmosphere.

    The blast occurred on the surface of an exotic kind of star - a super-magnetic neutron star called SGR 1806-20.

    If the explosion had been within just 10 light-years, Earth could have suffered a mass extinction, it is said.

    "We figure that it's probably the biggest explosion observed by humans within our galaxy since Johannes Kepler saw his supernova in 1604," Dr Rob Fender, of Southampton University, UK, told the BBC News website.

    One calculation has the giant flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashing about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts.


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