The Earth-orbiting satellite BeppoSAX, the solar-spying Ulysses, and NASA's Mars Odyssey combined to detect a brief yet intense gamma ray burst.

Gamma rays are so powerful that if generated nearby, they would penetrate steel and irradiate everything to extinction. Luckily, the newly observed burst came from more than 4 billion light-years away. That's the closest gamma-ray burst ever detected, researchers said.

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