Beyond Star Trek: A Realworld "Death Star" Galaxy

Whenever our attention turns towards the skies – planets, galaxies and stars – we have to reshift our thinking.  This discovery of a galactic "death star" is definitely one that is going to require some rethinking.

NASA observatories have discovered a rare phenomenon consisting of two galaxies, each with super-massive black holes at their center. The larger galaxy in question has a massive jet emanating from its black hole. The jet, which is producing high amounts of radiation, especially high-energy X-rays and gamma-rays, is now directly attacking the smaller galaxy, which has swung in to line of the jet.

This never-before witnessed galactic violence may have a profound effect on planets in the jet's path and trigger a burst of star formation in its destructive wake.

"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, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and leader of the study. "This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling."

Astrophysicists have recently turned their attention towards black hole jets, due to the enormous amount of change that they can inflict. A black hole may be super-massive, but a jet produced from such a hole can potentially affect matter on a much larger scale than the black hole ever could.

In addition, the negative or positive effects of such a jet upon a neighboring galaxy are of equal important to scientists. The combined effects of the radiation emitted and the speed at which they impact neighboring bodies could severely damage planets within a galaxy.

Conversely, the after effects of such an impact may have benefits for the affected galaxy. The massive influx of energy and radiation emitted from the jet may help in the formation of stars and planets after the jet (or the galaxy) moves on.

"We see jets all over the universe, but we're still struggling to understand some of their basic properties," said co-investigator Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. "This system of 3C321 gives us a chance to learn how they're affected when they slam into something like a galaxy and what they do after that."

The companion galaxy is likely though to suffer much damage, considering the short distance between the pair. The galaxies in 3C321 are extremely close at a distance of only about 20,000 light years apart, which equates to the same distance as the Earth from the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

Another unique aspect of the discovery is how relatively short-lived this event is on a cosmic time scale. Features seen in the Very Large Array and Chandra images indicate that the jet began impacting the galaxy about one million years ago, a small fraction of the system's lifetime. This means such an alignment is quite rare in the nearby universe, making 3C321 an important opportunity to study such a phenomenon.

NASA's space based Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope along with ground based telescopes The Very Large Array telescope, Socorro, N.M., and the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) telescopes in the United Kingdom, were all used to make the findings.

Posted by Josh Hill.

Links:

http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/07_releases/press_121707.html

Comments

[J. Armani]

The 'Death Star' was from Star Wars, not Star Trek.

[richard]

Exactly what I was thinking. Important? No, but nothing is sadder than people trying to be "cool" but displaying their ignorance by making erroneous references. It sounds like your great aunt trying to relate.