Huge gamma-ray blast spotted 12.2 bln light-years from earth

[jason]

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US space agency's Fermi telescope has detected a massive explosion in space which scientists say is the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected, a report published Thursday in Science Express said.

The spectacular blast, which occurred in September in the Carina constellation, produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than five billion times that of visible light, astrophysicists said.

"Visible light has an energy range of between two and three electron volts and these were in the millions to billions of electron volts," astrophysicist Frank Reddy of US space agency NASA told AFP.

"If you think about it in terms of energy, X-rays are more energetic because they penetrate matter. These things don't stop for anything -- they just bore through and that's why we can see them from enormous distances," Reddy said.

Huge gamma-ray blast spotted 12.2 bln light-years from earth - Neowin Forums

 

[BG_TRBL]

OK, without actually reading the article, just the excerpt which Jason has posted, I got the wheels turning and it made me think of something. Now bare with me on this.......
Ok, now, if these are the largest, most powerful Gamma Ray blast from 12 Billion light years away, and they are more powerful than x-rays. These gamma rays don't stop for anything. What will happen in 12 Billion Years to planet earth?? If it doesn't stop the rays, what will happen to the earth itself? melt-down, self-destruct, mutate into a warped planet which will then spiral off of it's orbit of the sun resulting in the destruction of our eco-friendly atmosphere as we know it?.... What happens when the rays hit other stars? will they start to release amplified rays? What about our sun? will it cause a SuperNova and implode upon itself creating a Black Hole from which nothing can escape?.....
Now given my obviously oblivious understanding of the astrophysics of the universe and everything else, I was taught that 1 light year was the time it takes for light to travel 1 year at the speed of light, given that, even with the assistance of a phenomenially large telescope, if the scientists could see the release, didn't it actually happen 12 Billion years ago, and it's gonna hit our planet soon???? WHAT OHHH WHAT WILL HAPPEN?????


Now that I have the conspiracy theorist up in arms, did anything I said make sense to anyone else??

Just making you all think.

 

[emarsh]

They already hit us - that's how we detected them.

Keep in mind that the intensity of light falls off as the square of the distance. Those particles may be very energetic but we are only seeing the most minute fraction of them.

Intensity: the Inverse Square Law