Chilling discovery of cosmic object that almost brought the Earth to 'apocalypse'

Many other planets 160 light years away are not as lucky as Earth, having their life-supporting layers stripped away by similar objects .

A team of scientists led by astronomer Ian Bruton of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) has discovered another dangerous impact that supernovae can have on planets similar to Earth.

A supernova is a stellar explosion that occurs when a star dies, releasing a torrent of violent cosmic rays into the surrounding environment. These terrifying energetic particles can impact nearby planets for hundreds to thousands of years .

Supernovae could hit Earth-like planets - (Graphic from NASA).

160 light years away, Earth-like but less fortunate planets are having their atmospheres damaged by powerful supernovae, meaning they are either uninhabitable or, worse, life is no longer possible.

The results come from observations based on 31 supernovae collected by NASA's Swift and NuSTAR missions , as well as ESA's (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory .

This new survey shows that not only does the radiation affect living organisms, the supernova also severely changes the chemistry of the planet's atmosphere.

If Earth were to experience a nearby explosion, the process could wipe out a significant portion of the ozone layer, which protects life from other cosmic rays that could damage its DNA.

This impact was large enough to cause a mass extinction.

This adds further doubt to previous findings suggesting that Earth's ancient mass extinction events were tied to the timing of several supernova explosions, with the simultaneous deaths of many plant and animal species tied to isotopes indicative of extraterrestrial impacts detected in tree rings.

Most recently, there is strong evidence that supernovae occurred 2-8 million years ago, 65-500 million light years from Earth, still quite far away but with signs of being associated with small mass extinctions.

The evidence is a bubble of hot gas called the Local Bubble that we are nestled within, low density and still expanding, surrounded by a shell of cold gas about 1,000 light years in diameter.

Fortunately, unlike those unfortunate planets far away, there are currently no supernovae threatening to explode near us, so at least we should be safe for the foreseeable future.

The study was recently published in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal.