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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."
Black hole denies farting; blames it on nearby neutron star.
that they could not nail down the exact nature of the exotic object giving off the deadly beam, but they did offer that "that's no moon"
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This is what happens when you're not willing to move your galaxy out of the path of a new intergalactic highway. Please don't complain about not knowing about it. The drawings been available in the next galaxy over for ages now.
This is old news, this did happen 1.4 billion years ago.
Besides, the ability to blast an entire neighboring galaxy with a gamma ray beam is insignificant compared to the power of the Force.
Yeah, we all know that scientific nomenclature is serious business.
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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If you want to be taken seriously as an astronomer then might I suggest not comparing your research to fictional works
;-)
Your suggestion is laughable, astronomers use fiction all the time. Consider the names of the planets, some constellations, etc. I apologize if you believe in the greek/roman gods, you have to consider that most of us consider them fictional.
sufficiently advanced life that would detect, and try to protect itself, or stop, said "death ray"
If there's a civilization that can shut down supermassive black holes at will then we'd know about it by now. Either because we're on the menu or we're needed to help clean the sewer mains on the black-hole-shutting-down supership.
Riight. Who says this black hole blasting a galaxy isn't exactly the kind of megaengineering we've been looking for?
How we know is more important than what we know.
The space age is great. It lets us all see that we live on the same small world. One that could, in princple, be accidently blown up by a careless, nearby black hole.
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?
Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Dachannien. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you complete your Q2 deliverables on time, or given you clairvoyance to know when your boss won't notice that you're reading Slashdot...
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.
I find your lack of karma disturbing...
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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".
Um, dude? That "death ray" has a significant scale relative to the size of a galaxy, all of it traveling at (x-rays, gamma rays) or close to (electrons) the speed of light. For one any species caught in its path wouldn't see it until it hit them, and two even if they knew about the beam it isn't clear that they could do anything about it except hide underground for thousands of years or bug out to another part of the galaxy, which itself would require faster-than-light travel. To actually redirect or shield themselves from the beam at a degree that would be visible in our telescopes would require technology on a scale that we can't even dream of.
I find it highly odd that you would be skeptical of the existence of life arising elsewhere in the universe (which while we have no idea what exactly it takes, we know is possible because it has happened at least once), because of the apparent lack of faster than light travel (which according to our current theories is impossible) or even more miraculous feats of what amount to complete science fiction. We can't say that it could ever even be theoretically possible to be "sufficiently advanced" to pull off what you propose, much less if humanity could ever attain it.
Have you seen the Hubble Deep Field? That's an extremely narrow view of the sky, and it's completely stuffed with galaxies. And because this one particular galaxy has not, as far as we can tell, birthed a civilization with Q-like powers, you're questioning whether there could be life anywhere else out there at all? That's literally the oddest form of skepticism I've ever heard.
Unless this is just dead-pan humor. I'll admit that I have problems detecting it when done with subtlety.
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