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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."
Yeah, we all know that scientific nomenclature is serious business.
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.
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
Just the fact that we can observe such a dramatic event is awe-inspiring.
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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?
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
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
... is "jet from supermassive black holes"?
I always thought no particle/energy can escape the event horizon of a black hole.
Please explain.
Woah! This is exactly the premise of A. A. Attanasio's Radix! A line of energy from a black hole hits earth (after having passed over countless other worlds) and interferes with its magnetic field, eventually leading to mass mutations. Brilliant book. :D Out of print, though, as far as I can tell. :(
Reality is fluffy!
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!
Asimov was asked questions about his fictional work "The Endocrinic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" at the oral defense of PhD thesis.
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