A new study finds that the chances of a gamma ray burst going off in our galaxy and destroying life on Earth are comfortingly close to zero.

Gamma ray bursts, or GRBs, are focused beams of gamma radiation emitted from the magnetic poles of black holes formed during the collapse of ancient, behemoth stars. They can also form when dead neutron stars merge with each other or with black holes.

It's been speculated that if a GRB went off near our solar system, and one of the beams hit Earth, it could set off a global mass extinction.

But in a new study to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers found that GRBs tend to occur in small, metal-poor galaxies and estimated that the likelihood of one occurring in our own metal-rich Milky Way is less than 0.15 percent.

"There are a lot of people who have wondered whether GRBs could be blamed for mass extinctions early in Earth's history, and our work suggests that is not the case," said study team member Krzysztof Stanek from Ohio State University.

Destroyer of life

GRBs can last anywhere from a few milliseconds to several minutes and are one of the brightest, and potentially the most deadly phenomena in the universe.

So powerful are these events that some scientists have speculated they could help explain the so-called Fermi Paradox: If the universe is teaming with advanced alien civilizations as some theories predict, then why have we never found any traces of them?

One answer could be that events like GRBs turn galaxies into giant autoclaves that sterilize life forms on planets before they have can develop interstellar travel.

Some scientists think that such an event might have already occurred in our own galaxy.

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