At a distance of 3-12 thousand light-years from Earth within our Galaxy collided large space objects, which was accompanied by a powerful burst of energy, the ability to cripple all of the spacecraft to orbit the planet.

People are lucky because the radiation emitted into space in the result of the disaster reached the Earth in middle ages. When the mankind has not flown in space and were not even aware of the incident. Invisible to the eye flash energy was absorbed by the atmosphere, but left traces in the form of isotopes of beryllium and carbon.

So I think German scientists, who in his article in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, tried to explain the origin of the phenomenon, open in 2012.

About the mysterious outbreak became known, once in Antarctic ice has encountered an extraordinary amount of radioactive beryllium-10, formed in the atmosphere under the influence of cosmic radiation, and researchers from the Country of the rising sun are faced with increased content of carbon-14 in Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) from the island of Yakushima.

The specified isotope of carbon is formed from nitrogen-14 under the influence of gamma radiation, thus hinting that a powerful surge once reached not only the atmosphere, but also of the earth.

In 2012, thanks to the care of a student from the USA managed to find a mention of the mysterious cosmic phenomenon in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicles". The scientists looked at the annual rings of trees and determined the time and space of an accident - 774-775 years of our era.

However, the radiation source still remained a mystery to researchers. Solar flare such capacity burned would ozone layer of the planet. One would assume that there was an explosion of a supernova, but this version was not enough evidence (there should have been signs of the influence of other types of radiation x - ray and radio emission).

According to scientists from Germany, the source of this huge release of energy could be a collision of black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs. Whether by accident or, on the contrary, harmonious fusion, this process takes only a few seconds, but frees up a tremendous amount of radiation.

"We looked range of short gamma-ray bursts, to see how it will fit observed the formation of carbon-14 and beryllium-10, and it turned out that corresponds", says Professor Ralph Neuhauser (Ralph Neuhauser) of the astrophysical Institute and Observatory of Jena University.

According to the researcher, such gamma-ray bursts is extremely rare. Modern observations of deep space say that they occur in the Galaxy on different estimates once in 10 thousand-1 million years.