Huge ‘star-quake’ rocks Milky Way

Astronomers say they have been stunned by the amount of energy released in a star explosion on the far side of our galaxy, 50,000 light-years away.The flash of radiation on 27 December was so powerful that it bounced off the Moon and lit up the Earth’s atmosphere. The blast occurred on the surface of an exotic kind of star – a super-magnetic neutron star called SGR 1806-20. If the explosion had been within just 10 light-years, Earth could have suffered a mass extinction, it is said.