If Gamma Ray Bursts have been detected by satellites, how come none of them have hit the Earth and cooked the atmosphere? I thought a GRB aimed in our general direction would be an extinction event.
Would it cook all the Earth or only the unlucky half that is in that direction?
Its effects are observed in the fossil record of marine life (effectively: the only life on Earth at the time), and were far more pronounced at shallow depths than deeper ones, corresponding to dose-effect theories.
Note that this is a hypothesis and would likely be impossible to verify.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Ordovician_mass_extinctio...>