[burnThemAll]

Think about the odds of the beam being perfectly aligned and aimed to hit the planet with dead-on accuracy though. Even if the spread of the beam is as wide as Pluto's orbit, we'd have to be pretty unlucky to get hit.

If it's as narrow as the arc of a season, one quarter of the Earth's orbit, it could hit us during Autumn or miss us during Winter, or not at all if it's not pointed into the path of our orbit.