Fifth Anniversary of a Cosmic Onslaught

The Bad Astronomer writes "Five years ago today (December 27, 2004), a vast wave of high-energy gamma and X-rays washed over the Earth, blinding satellites and partially ionizing the Earth's atmosphere. The culprit was a superflare from the magnetar SGR 1806-20, located 50,000 light years away. The energy released was mind-numbing: in one-fifth of a second, this supercharged magnetic neutron star blasted out as much energy as the Sun does in 250,000 years!"

Cause

[OverlordQ]

After investigating further, the scientists found that the the star likely ate at Chipotle earlier in the day.

Re:ZOMG! Are we OK?

[Tablizer]

It's okay. Quantum probability time-paths have resulted in a back-up of us. However, your next girlfriend will be 70% uglier than otherwise would have been. That's the price one pays for using quantum backup devices.

Re:Five year old news?

[john83]

Someone here has to submit the story to the slashdot servers. Assuming it's accepted immediately, as the standard of editing suggests, someone who sent a page request for the frontpage just after the submission would see the story when the frontpage got back to him. His request for the story then has to be propagated to the server, which has to reply. This means that the server is not more than 1.25 light years away from Earth. Clearly, you must be new here.

Tsunami

[Lord Lode]

That's just 1 day after the tsunami. Could there be a connection?!

Re:Five year old news?

[peragrin]

Oddly enough that explains all the dupes one sees on slashdot quite well. They are being uploaded from various star systems, and teh editors don't see the final page until after they have already clicked on submit.

Re:Tsunami

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless some even more massive wave of as yet unmeasurable energy propogated across the universe causing both tsunami and quake on the magnetar.

It was the midichlorians. George Lucas was right!

Re:Frist Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

"What methods can you use to visualize such extreme numbers?"

According to the article you need a monitor a thousand feet tall.

Re:Frist Post!

[laejoh]

It's Bouquet!

Re:Zero warning

[Al Al Cool J]

If you were to test it on every rat in existence, leading to the total exctinction of the rat species, then blow up the earth, and kill every other sentient being in the universe, while ascending to godhood and changing the laws of physics so that salt water can no longer exist, then I think that would pretty much prove it. Your problem is that you're just lazy.