A giant jet of energy from a supermassive black hole has been witnessed punching into a neighbouring galaxy, with potentially devastating consequences. Any ETs living in the jet’s path would be bombarded with huge amounts of radiation and particles travelling at the speed of light (press release, coverage from BBC, Reuters, Washington Post, National Geographic).

“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. This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummelling,” says Dan Evans, leader of the study, (NASA press release).

Evans and colleagues produced the spectacular image seen above using a veritable who’s who of modern telescopes,. Together, the two galaxies – the larger one in the lower left of the composite picture and a smaller one above it to the right – make up the 3C321 system.

Witness the power of our fully operational telescopes…

The purple is X-ray data from Chandra; the red and orange is optical and UV data from Hubble; blue is radio emission from the Very Large Array and MERLIN. The bright blue spot in the VLA MERLIN image is the point where the jet strikes the target galaxy.

“Black holes are famous for wreaking havoc on their environment. This particular black hole is disrupting its local region by dining on matter that wanders too close – which is the source of the energy for this jet. It also fires a jet out of the galaxy. So it is like a black hole bully, punching the nose of a passing galaxy,” says Neil Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York (BBC and others).

As Wired’s coverage points out, jets have been observed before – witness this abstract and news coverage. The Telegraph highlights that this Death star ‘could be wiping out alien life’. Sadly, as my boss has pointed out before here, the universe is a savage place. If you want to believe in ET you have to believe that he or she is being massacred all the time.

However, it is Christmas so NASA tries to lighten the tone, “It is possible the event is not all bad news for the galaxy being struck by the jet. The massive influx of energy and radiation from the jet could induce the formation of large numbers of stars and planets after its initial wake of destruction is complete”

Which is rather like saying, don’t worry that you’re about to be riddled with bullets, you’ll be providing lots of food for worms.

Extras

Zoomable version of main image

Images and composite shot of system: credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/D.Evans et al.; Optical/UV: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/VLA/CfA/D.Evans et al., STFC/JBO/MERLIN