Black Hole Blasts Neighbor Galaxy with Deadly Jet 222
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:Way to be taken seriously.. (Score:5, Interesting)
No anomalies detected (Score:3, Interesting)
Some people believe the universe is chock full of life, but this one is score for the skeptics. I remain a cautious optimist.
Real Leap forward: Telescopes (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Re:No anomalies detected (Score:5, Interesting)
1.4 billion light years (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
(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
WTF ... (Score:1, Interesting)
I always thought no particle/energy can escape the event horizon of a black hole.
Please explain.
Radix! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:One flaw... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah, but can you imagine missing anything at the bottom of a gravity well formed by a supermassive black hole? The womp rat winds up at the same place as the torpedoes, and the singularity's infinitely not-bigger-than two meters!
Re:Wrong, astronomers use fiction all the time ... (Score:3, Interesting)