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Black Hole Blasts Neighbor Galaxy with Deadly Jet

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Dec 17, 2007 06:22 PM
from the no-star-system-will-dare-oppose-the-emperor-now dept.
Space Science
butterwise writes to mention that astronomers have, for the first time, witnessed a super-massive black hole hitting a nearby galaxy with a "death-star-like" beam of energy. The story also has a video with simulations, pictures, and explanations. "The 'death star galaxy,' as NASA astronomers called it, could obliterate the atmospheres of planets but also trigger the birth of stars in the wake of its destructive beam. Fortunately, the cosmic violence is a safe distance from our own neck of the cosmos."
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story

Related Stories

[+] Cosmic Rays From Galactic Black Holes 51 comments
dork writes in with word of a study that contradicts, at least for the highest-energy events, the recent conclusion that cosmic rays are probably formed in supernova remnants. The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina has announced that active galactic nuclei are the most likely candidates for the source of the highest-energy cosmic rays that hit Earth. The researchers found that the sources of these highly energetic events are not distributed uniformly across the sky, linking their origins to the locations of nearby galaxies hosting active nuclei in their centers. These galaxies are thought to be powered by supermassive black holes that are devouring large amounts of matter. The exact mechanism of how particles get accelerated to energies 100 million times higher than achievable by the most powerful particle accelerators on Earth is still unknown. The observatory has made 1% of its events available through a public online event display."
Submission: Galaxy Blasts Neighbor with Deadly Jet by butterwise (862336)
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  • Imagine that on a Boeing, you wouldn't have to worry about collateral damage, there'd be nothing remotely collateral left :-)

  • He Who Smelt It Dealt It (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 17 2007, @06:25PM (#21732656)
    Black hole denies farting; blames it on nearby neutron star.

  • One flaw... (Score:3, Funny)

    by downix (84795) on Monday December 17 2007, @06:26PM (#21732674) Homepage
    When those pesky x-wings fly down and shoot the exhaust vent....
    • Dude, it's no bigger than a womprat.. there's no way.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by budgenator (254554)
            that two meters on the outside could be a whole galaxy on the inside, add in frame-dragging and it would be like shooting a whomp-rat from a billion lightyears away
  • that they could not nail down the exact nature of the exotic object giving off the deadly beam, but they did offer that "that's no moon"

  • Eminent domain... (Score:5, Funny)

    by creimer (824291) on Monday December 17 2007, @06:29PM (#21732708) Homepage
    This is what happens when you're not willing to move your galaxy out of the path of a new intergalactic highway. Please don't complain about not knowing about it. The drawings been available in the next galaxy over for ages now.

  • Old news (Score:5, Funny)

    by jonfr (888673) * on Monday December 17 2007, @06:31PM (#21732722) Homepage
    This is old news, this did happen 1.4 billion years ago.

    • Re:Old news (Score:5, Interesting)

      by shadowbearer (554144) on Monday December 17 2007, @07:41PM (#21733324) Homepage Journal
      And considering that the major damage to any inhabited planets that may have been there would have been radiation effects, one has to wonder if there's any intelligent species over there digging up 1.4 billion year old, relatively undamaged artifacts on their planets surfaces right now ;)

        (Disclaimer: I'm not saying we've found any here on Earth, just that it's interesting to speculate about)

        We'll never know...

      SB

  • Won't someone think of the aliens?!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mistshadow2k4 (748958) on Monday December 17 2007, @06:33PM (#21732750) Journal

    Fortunately, the cosmic violence is a safe distance from our own neck of the cosmos.

    That doesn't help the poor aliens living in that neck of the cosmos, you insensitive clod!

  • No anomalies detected (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stan Vassilev (939229) on Monday December 17 2007, @06:44PM (#21732854) Homepage
    That would indirectly suggest that in this galaxy there was no sufficiently advanced life that would detect, and try to protect itself, or stop, said "death ray".

    Some people believe the universe is chock full of life, but this one is score for the skeptics. I remain a cautious optimist.

    • Re:No anomalies detected (Score:5, Insightful)

      by magarity (164372) on Monday December 17 2007, @07:07PM (#21733046)
      sufficiently advanced life that would detect, and try to protect itself, or stop, said "death ray"
       
      If there's a civilization that can shut down supermassive black holes at will then we'd know about it by now. Either because we're on the menu or we're needed to help clean the sewer mains on the black-hole-shutting-down supership.

    • Re:No anomalies detected (Score:5, Interesting)

      by QuantumG (50515) <qg@biodome.org> on Monday December 17 2007, @07:11PM (#21733066) Homepage Journal
      Riight. Who says this black hole blasting a galaxy isn't exactly the kind of megaengineering we've been looking for?
    • Well, the Earth is pretty chock full of life, and if that thing aimed for us, we'd be amazingly screwed.

      Maybe its not even technologicaly and physically possible to protect yourself from something like that. At best, if there was a super high tech civilisation in that galaxy, they got their alien asses out of there. But even then, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but even if you have a ship capable of light speed, you better have had that technology LONG before the ray hit the galaxy to make it out in time.

    • Re:No anomalies detected (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chris Burke (6130) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:35PM (#21733646) Homepage
      That would indirectly suggest that in this galaxy there was no sufficiently advanced life that would detect, and try to protect itself, or stop, said "death ray".

      Um, dude? That "death ray" has a significant scale relative to the size of a galaxy, all of it traveling at (x-rays, gamma rays) or close to (electrons) the speed of light. For one any species caught in its path wouldn't see it until it hit them, and two even if they knew about the beam it isn't clear that they could do anything about it except hide underground for thousands of years or bug out to another part of the galaxy, which itself would require faster-than-light travel. To actually redirect or shield themselves from the beam at a degree that would be visible in our telescopes would require technology on a scale that we can't even dream of.

      I find it highly odd that you would be skeptical of the existence of life arising elsewhere in the universe (which while we have no idea what exactly it takes, we know is possible because it has happened at least once), because of the apparent lack of faster than light travel (which according to our current theories is impossible) or even more miraculous feats of what amount to complete science fiction. We can't say that it could ever even be theoretically possible to be "sufficiently advanced" to pull off what you propose, much less if humanity could ever attain it.

      Have you seen the Hubble Deep Field [hubblesite.org]? That's an extremely narrow view of the sky, and it's completely stuffed with galaxies. And because this one particular galaxy has not, as far as we can tell, birthed a civilization with Q-like [wikipedia.org] powers, you're questioning whether there could be life anywhere else out there at all? That's literally the oddest form of skepticism I've ever heard.

      Unless this is just dead-pan humor. I'll admit that I have problems detecting it when done with subtlety.

      • Re:No anomalies detected (Score:4, Insightful)

        by graffix_jones (444726) on Monday December 17 2007, @10:58PM (#21734518)
        That deep field photo is humbling beyond words. It really gives you perspective on just how insignificant we are, in the philosophical grand scheme of things.

        To paraphrase Carl Sagan's Contact, if there isn't any intelligent life out there, it sure would be an awful big waste of space.

  • Real Leap forward: Telescopes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by writerjosh (862522) * on Monday December 17 2007, @06:44PM (#21732864) Homepage
    We often take for granted when we see these cool renditions of distant space that these images are only possible when based on the leaps and bounds made with various telescopes over the last 50+ years:

    "Only now by combining the images of radio telescopes, the optical and ultraviolet eyes of Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, can researchers put together the entire violent story about this intergalactic mugging.

    The coordinated use of such an array of diverse and powerful telescopes is one of the unheralded triumphs of modern physics, Tyson said. "This is an example of the triumph of that exercise." http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/17/galaxy-black-hole-02.html [discovery.com]

    Just the fact that we can observe such a dramatic event is awe-inspiring.
    • Our eyes are so amazingly beyond any other organism's, that I say humans have abilities which are truly cosmic in scale. Think of the most powerful biological eye - probably a hawk or eagle's - and then compare the light-gathering and resolving power of it to the resolution and light gathered from an astronomical observation. It is a truly stellar distance, the separation.

      Yes, the biological human eye does not compare, but I consider our technology to be a part of us. After all, humans aren't really that we
    • In other news, a clandestine Rebellion broadcast announced the deployment of a Super-Super-Super-Super-Super-Super Death Star in response to the Imperial deployment of the Super-Super-Super-Super-Super Death Star. Unfortunately, life thruout the galaxy was snuffed out before any official Imperial comment on the claim could be *NO CARRIER*

      SB

  • the universe could get caught in a drive-by (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mrpeebles (853978) on Monday December 17 2007, @07:11PM (#21733068)
    The space age is great. It lets us all see that we live on the same small world. One that could, in princple, be accidently blown up by a careless, nearby black hole.

  • 1.4 billion light years (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ConcreteJungle (1177207) on Monday December 17 2007, @07:33PM (#21733254)
    The article states: Both galaxies are situated about 1.4 billion light-years away from Earth.

    and then goes on with: The offending galaxy probably began assaulting its companion about 1 million years ago...

    If the distance is 1.4 billion light years, light from the event should be taking that much time to reach us, and something that happened only a million years ago should not be visible yet.

    What am I missing here?

  • That is No Deathray Kids (Score:3, Funny)

    by g16n (1099619) on Monday December 17 2007, @09:38PM (#21734032)
    This is what happens when a seductive mama galaxy spins in close proximity to an excited papa galaxy.

    • Re:Way to be taken seriously.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dachannien (617929) on Monday December 17 2007, @06:32PM (#21732734)
      Besides, the ability to blast an entire neighboring galaxy with a gamma ray beam is insignificant compared to the power of the Force.

    • Re:Way to be taken seriously.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Veinor (871770) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <roniev>> on Monday December 17 2007, @06:36PM (#21732784)
      Yeah, we all know that scientific [wikipedia.org] nomenclature [wikipedia.org] is [wikipedia.org] serious [wikipedia.org] business [wikipedia.org].

      • the physics term is pronounced "kwork"

        Well, I have a degree in physics and I've never heard it pronounced "kwork", everyone pronounced it as it's spelt, as "kwark". Maybe it's a UK/US thing?

        Speaking of quarks though, I like the names - charm, strange, up, down, top and bottom (which were called truth and beauty at first; I still think they should have stuck).

        Anyway, scientific nomenclature is a serious business - but scientists are people too...

        • Both are correct as long as you mean kwork as kw-orc. If you mean that like kw-irk, then that's the word quirk, which has a very different meaning.

        • I have no idea if it's right, but I pronounce it like the name of the Ferengi in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

        • Well I'm a particle physics professor and the overwhelmingly common pronunciation is 'kwark'. Although I have heard the occasional 'kwork' but only from US people and that only rarely....so now that re-education campaign has worked we just need to get them to pronounce the name of the Z ('zed') boson correctly! :-)
    • If you want to be taken seriously as an astronomer then might I suggest not comparing your research to fictional works

      Your suggestion is laughable, astronomers use fiction all the time. Consider the names of the planets, some constellations, etc. I apologize if you believe in the greek/roman gods, you have to consider that most of us consider them fictional. ;-)

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by budgenator (254554)
          Asimov was asked questions about his fictional work "The Endocrinic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" at the oral defense of PhD thesis.
    • If you want to relate to the masses, instead of assuming everyone who might be interested in your work has a degree in astrophysics, you might compare your research to fictional works easily recognized in society.

    • Re:WTF ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by CroDragn (866826) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:24PM (#21733578)
      You're correct, they can't (though lookup black hole evaporation for a way matter "exits" a black hole w/o actually crossing the event horizon). However, as matter circles the black hole prior to actually falling into it's event horizon it becomes superheated and a great deal of radiation is shot off from both the holes poles prior to the matters actual disappearance into the event horizon.

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