Tommie's Science Corner

(Take that!)

Galaxy Zapping Neighbor With Deathly Beam

Astronomers have spotted a distant galaxy zapping its smaller neighbor with a deadly, Death Star-like particle beam.

The beam is a jet of particles moving at near light-speed out of a super-massive black hole at the center of the larger galaxy. The beam has smashed into the nearby second galaxy, where it is probably decimating an untold number of planets.

"There will be bad effects on Earth-like planets," confirmed astronomer Daniel Evans of Harvard-Smithsonian Center.

On the other hand, the jet's smashing into the other galaxy's clouds of gas and dust could very well trigger the clouds to contract and give birth to new stars there, explained researcher Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K..

"Its long-term legacy is that it could produce a new generation of stars in the companion galaxy," said Hardcastle. Both Hardcastle and Evans announced the discovery in a press teleconference on Monday, Dec. 17.

Either way, there's strong evidence that the violence won't last, said Hardcastle.

A wider view of the event shows that there are two hot spots a couple of million light-years apart, on either side of the galactic mugging. These are the ends of the black hole's two polar jets, where they hit other material in intergalactic space.

The fact that the hot spot beyond the smaller galaxy is still lit up means it's still getting zapped with material that was sent flying before the smaller galaxy moved into the way and interrupted the beam.

Since it takes about a million years for light-speed particles to traverse the distance to the hot spots, the still lit-up hot spot means the smaller galaxy has been feeling the heat for less than a million years, Hardcastle explained.