Forgive me if my facts are a little distorted, as i wasn't sober when i was told this story, but the general gist is this:

At the other end of the galaxy, a star did what all stars eventually do; it burned out and imploded onto itself creating a super dense mass (you know the deal, black holes, and such and such). Anyway, the thing that was created was only 10 kilometers in length, but created such a force that in 1/8 the of a second it created the same amount of energy that our sun gives off in thousands of years (if i remember the numbers correctly). This explosion was observable from here. Furthermore, experts agree that any planet/life within 10 light years of this object was instantly destroyed. It was if the death star was getting tested out.

Now, assuming there is life out there (which there has to be just based on the law of averages), the question is: should we care that entire worlds were just destroyed? The answer is no. If you run the numbers, there is a huge number of planets with life. HUGE. And thus, there is almost an infinite number of deaths occuring on a "daily" (for lack of a more objective measure of time) basis. As such, a whole planet being wiped out really doesn't skew the numbers as much as you would think. And, figuring that all these lives died instantly and w/o pain or the knowledge of what was coming, then the horror of the situation is even lessened.

So, if an alien from a planet who was destroyed happened to survive b/c they were on vacation or something, and are now reading this blog, I just want to let them know that I don't care that they died. I better not be seeing any green bracelets for relief funds!