See other Science/Tech Articles
Title: Galaxy blasts neighbor with deadly beam of energy
Source:
USA Today
URL Source: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/scienc ... -12-17-death-star-galaxy_N.htm
Published: Dec 17, 2007
Author: Dave Mosher, SPACE.com
Post Date: 2007-12-17 17:02:33 by aristeides
Keywords: None
Views: 190
Comments: 9
Galaxy blasts neighbor with deadly beam of energy By Dave Mosher, SPACE.com Posted 1h 39m ago For the first time astronomers have witnessed a supermassive black hole blasting its galactic neighbor with a deadly beam of energy. 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. "We've seen many jets produced by black holes, but this is the first time we've seen one punch into another galaxy like we're seeing here," said Dan Evans, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling." Evans and his colleagues detail their findings in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The deadly galaxy — the largest of two in a system known as 3C321 — is aiming the high-energy jet from its center at a smaller galaxy 20,000 light-years away from it, or roughly the distance from Earth to the Milky Way's core. Both galaxies are situated about 1.4 billion light-years away from Earth. A bright spot in a NASA composite image reveals that the beam is striking the edge of the smaller galaxy, deflecting the spindle of energy into intergalactic space. While not a direct hit, astronomers said the consequences are frightening. "This is a fascinating result, and we can be glad that we're seeing it from a safe distance," said Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York who did not contribute to the study. "Knowing how lethal the radiation from the jet could be, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near its line of fire." Jets from supermassive black holes produce tremendous radiation in the form of X-rays, gamma rays and electrons traveling close to the speed of light. Evans said, however, that the X-ray and gamma-ray photons would ultimately do the most damage to planets. "The photons can have a really dramatic, profound effect on a planetary atmosphere," he said. "It's likely the ozone layer on an Earth-like planet would be destroyed within months." Without an ozone layer to protect a planet from deadly space radiation, Tyson said creatures on a planet's surface would perish quickly. "You would basically render extinct all surface forms of life," Tyson said. "But it may be that subterranean life is ... immune to this kind of violence in the universe." Recent attack The offending galaxy probably began assaulting its companion about 1 million years ago, which is relatively recent on a cosmic time scale. Evans said the unusual event makes 3C321 an important object for learning more about the universe. "We've seen jets do pretty weird things to their environments, but a head-on collision is really rare and generates a [large] amount of information about physics that we can understand and use," Evans said. "For that galaxy to be looking right down ... the barrel of the gun of that jet is incredibly rare, so this makes it a really exciting discovery." Turns out that the "death ray" may not be all bad news for the victimized galaxy, at least theoretically, as such a massive influx of energy and radiation could help form new stars and solar systems by compressing gases. "In the end [3C321] may be the source of new life in that distant galaxy," said Martin Hardcastle, an astronomer at the University of Hertfordshire, in the United Kingdom. Hardcastle explained that the jet will continue to pour out of its parent supermassive black hole for about 10 to 100 million longer — plenty of time to squeeze otherwise inert gas together into new star systems. "Jets can be highly disruptive ... but [create] stellar nurseries," Tyson said. "It's a fascinating sort of duality about how these high-energy phenomena influence the environments in which they're embedded." To fully view the galactic violence and rebirth, astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and the Very Large Array and MERLIN radio telescopes on Earth.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: All (#0)
If the galaxies are 1.8 billion light years away, how can we be aware already of an event that only began 1 million years ago?
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
This is so far beyond my comprehension, I cannot tell you.
Maybe nobody knows.
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
Many believe in either intelligent design or evolution...but I am opting for unintelligent design, where god is a retarded kid who likes setting army men on fire and leaving his toys out in the rain. Gengis Gandhi, Troubled Genius
"I am the Galaxy Being, here to blast you with a deadly beam of energy!"
Fortune favors the prepared mind. A zombie, however, prefers it raw.
I think it meant to say "visible from earth" 1 million years ago. BTW, the story said 1.4 billion light years away, not 1.8. So if the galaxies in question are 1.4 billion light years away, and we could just begin to see it from earth a million years ago, then it started happening 1.399 billion years ago. If the event lasted for a 100 million years, then it stopped happening 1.3 billion years ago. For all we know, the same thing could have happened to our own galaxy around the same time.. That's what's so cool about looking at such far away objects, as we are seeing ancient events from billions of years ago unfold as if it were today.
We can't. What we're seeing of an object 1.8 billion light-years distance are the photons of light which left the object 1.8 billion years ago. They're estimating that the cause of such a disturbance may have been building 1 million years before that instant which the photons of light left that distant object in space.
I agree. Nothing else would make sense.
http://www.physorg.com/news79361214.html "The composition of black hole jets has been the topic of heated debate for several decades. Scientists generally agree that the jets must be made either of electrons and their antimatter partners, called positrons, or an even mix of electrons and protons. Recent theoretical and observational advances have pointed in the direction of the latter." I can remember actually being annoyed for a long time at finding out that a black hole's jet-pair wasn't an electron jet and a positron jet. Now I realize it doesn't rule out the existence of anti-matter black holes in so-called dark matter anyway. I like the notion that regular matter is dark matter's dark matter. It's simple, and nobody knows, yet it's funny. The two apparently like to stick together separately. For the most part the only thing that seems to be passing between the two is the odd gamma ray burst. How that happens is anyone's guess, though there seems to be a lack of spatial symmetry between dark and regular matter in the observable universe, as dark matter supposedly hovers around above and below the galaxy's disk, like an invisible burger bun, maybe with some sesame seeds on it. Moreover, along the last line of thinking, whether or not there are galaxies in which we can see only matter that is distributed in the same way as dark matter in this galaxy is something else I'd have to guess at to answer. I tend to think such is not the case and the whole apparent imbalance situation between regular matter and dark matter, and between matter and anti-matter, could either be a chance sort of goemetric thing or a particle-theory geometric sort of thing. It would also raise the question of whether dark matter would just pass right through regular matter, which is just plain weird, to me anyway, not to mention it doesn't fit the "antimatter as dark matter" concept. I cannot get a giggle or a grin out of it. In any event, there would not seem to be a strong mutually attractive gravitational interaction between the dark matter supposedly hanging around above and below at a distance and the regular matter on the disk of the Milky Way. I suppose it's that quantum gravity attraction/repulsion spacing-apart effect I've been dwelling on recently that would explain the mutual lack of attraction there. I need to start thinking about something else. All I think about is food and not eating.
#2. To: aristeides (#0)
#3. To: aristeides, nobody (#1)
The Revolution will not be televised!
#4. To: aristeides (#0)
supermassive black hole
#5. To: aristeides (#0)
#6. To: aristeides (#1)
If the galaxies are 1.8 billion light years away, how can we be aware already of an event that only began 1 million years ago?
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#7. To: aristeides (#1)
how can we be aware already of an event that only began 1 million years ago?
#8. To: FormerLurker (#6)
I think it meant to say "visible from earth" 1 million years ago.
#9. To: robin (#3)
(Edited)
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest