Greenbelt – A massive gamma ray burst briefly blinded NASA´s Swift orbiting space observatory when a star was turning into a black hole. The cosmic x-ray blast is the brightest ever detected on record.
Gamma ray bursts are luminous electromagnetic occurrences that are mostly known to happen in distant galaxies during a supernova event or when a star collapses and forms a black hole. These blasts can last from a few milliseconds to a few minutes and are known to be followed by an afterglow.
These bursts can span from a small distance to billions of light-years across and cannot be foreseen, however, most blasts are billions of light-years away from our planet. They are also quite rare as only a handful occur every one million years.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/294720
How insignificant we are in the scheme of the Universe?
5 billion-year-old gamma ray burst temporarily blinds observatory.
