Currently orbiting satellites detect an average of about one gamma-ray burst per day. Because gamma-ray bursts are visible to distances encompassing most of the observable universe, a volume encompassing many billions of galaxies, this suggests that gamma-ray bursts must be exceedingly rare events per galaxy.
Measuring the exact rate of gamma-ray bursts is difficult, but for a galaxy of approximately the same size as the Milky Way, the expected rate (for long GRBs) is about one burst every 100,000 to 1,000,000 years. Only a few percent of these would be beamed toward Earth. Estimates of rates of short GRBs are even more uncertain because of the unknown beaming fraction, but are probably comparable.
A gamma-ray burst in the Milky Way, if close enough to Earth and beamed toward it, could have significant effects on the biosphere. The absorption of radiation in the atmosphere would cause photodissociation of nitrogen, generating nitric oxide that would act as a catalyst to destroy ozone.
The atmospheric photodissociation
would yield
* NO (consumes up to 400 ozone molecules)
* CH (nominal)
* CH (nominal)
* CO
(incomplete)
According to a 2004 study, a GRB at a distance of about a kiloparsec could destroy up to half of Earth's ozone layer; the direct UV irradiation from the burst combined with additional solar UV radiation passing through the diminished ozone layer could then have potentially significant impacts on the food chain and potentially trigger a mass extinction. The authors estimate that one such burst is expected per billion years, and hypothesize that the Ordovician-Silurian extinction event could have been the result of such a burst.
There are strong indications that long gamma-ray bursts preferentially or exclusively occur in regions of low metallicity. Because the Milky Way has been metal-rich since before the Earth formed, this effect may diminish or even eliminate the possibility that a long gamma-ray burst has occurred within the Milky Way within the past billion years. No such metallicity biases are known for short gamma-ray bursts. Thus, depending on their local rate and beaming properties, the possibility for a nearby event to have had a large impact on Earth at some point in geological time may still be significant.