Black Hole Blasts Neighbor Galaxy with Deadly Jet

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."

Re:1.4 billion light years

[shadowbearer]

The collision began about 1.5 billion years ago, about one million years before we observed it. The estimate is based off the two galaxies motion relative to each other.

  It's just imprecise language. :)

SB

Re:WTF ...

[CroDragn]

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.

Re:One flaw...

[budgenator]

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

Re:1.4 billion light years

[budgenator]

I'm sure what they really meant to say was that the galactic events we are seeing happened 1.4 billion years ago and had been occurring for 1 million years before we noticed it.

Re:1.4 billion light years

[Edward Ka-Spel]

Not 1.5 billion, 1.401 billion years ago.