mind-boggling numbers of the day.

Gamma Ray Bursts are reckoned to be 10¹⁷ times as bright as the sun. If you're unlucky enough to be in the 5-degree-wide beam that this energy is emitted in, a rough calculation leads me to conclude that the Minimum Safe Distance is of the order of a few tens or hundreds of light years. Given that the energy arrives as Gamma- and X-Rays, I may be a bit off here at least as far as macroscopic life is concerned, since I Am Not A Radiobiologist.

Still, that's still a mind-bogglingly big bang. Good thing we've only observed them in other galaxies, then.

[Source: Scientific American, Dead Tree Edition, Dec 2002]