The story of Armaggedon may just hold true as a new study revealed that explosions of stars or black hole collisions in the Milky Way produces colossal blasts of lethal gamma rays, X-rays and cosmic rays that can severely threaten Earth.

The new findings corroborates previous studies that demonstration how high-energy radiations bursts and extreme solar flares can deplete the stratospheric ozone which allows the most powerful and damaging forms of ultraviolet radiation to penetrate the Earth's surface.

A similar event of a more intense nature could threaten life on the land or in the oceans, the report said.

Astrophysicist Brian Thomas of Washburn University cited the data accumulated by the SWIFT satellite which catches gamma ray bursts in actions in other galaxies.

He noted that short gamma ray bursts are actually more significant than longer gamma ray bursts in terms of the amount of radiation, and if these short gamma ray bursts happen in the Milky Way, its effects would be more lasting to the Earth's surface and oceans.

Thomas explained that the initial effect will be the depletion of the ozone layer by knocking free oxygen and nitrogen atoms so they can recombine into ozone-destroying nitrous oxides. These long-lived molecules will continue destroying the ozone until the rain out and the effects would be devastation for many forms of life on Earth, including terrestrial and marine plants which are the foundation of the food web.

According to Thomas, who presented his work at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, the Earth could have been exposed to such events scores of times in its history because as seen in other galaxies, it seems that these short bursts occur at a rate of about once per 100 million years.

However, since the galaxy spins and mixes every million years, whatever astronomical evidence would be gone. However, on Earth, scientists are looking at isotope iron-60 which has been argued as a possible proxy for radiation events. Thus, there is a need to study the correlation of extinction events and identifying what died and what survived to be able to shed more light on this matter, he added.