Galaxy fires powerful particle beam at neighbour

[docm]

Gotta love those New Scientist headlines <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />Link....<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b>Galaxy fires powerful particle beam at neighbour</b><br /><br />A new weapon of intergalactic war has been found. A jet of hot gas and high-energy particles is shooting out from the core of a galaxy called 3C321 and hitting a neighbour, a new study reveals.<br /><br />Galaxies have been known to ram into each other, but this is the first known example of attack by particle beam.<br /><br />A team of astronomers noticed that 3C321 and its neighbour, which lie about 1.4 billion light years from Earth, made an unusual pair when they looked at data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory.<br /><br />Both of these galaxies have active cores, where a giant black hole is feeding on gas and generating all sorts of radiation, including the X-rays picked up by Chandra. It is fairly rare for individual galaxies to be active in this way, so a pair of them was worth investigating further.<br /><br />Two radio observatories – the Very Large Array in New Mexico, US, and the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network in Britain – produced another surprise. Their combined radio image reveals that a jet of matter squirts out of 3C321, then suddenly turns to one side and flares out.<br /><br />"We expect a jet to be a pencil beam of emission, but we saw it flaring, and wondered what was going on," says lead author Daniel Evans of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.<br /><br />They soon got their answer by looking at old Hubble Space Telescope images. "We saw that it was slamming into the lower half of the other galaxy," Evans told New Scientist.<br />Radiation blast<br /><br />Any Earth-like planets that may lie in the path of this beam might be sterilised. If such a jet were aimed at Earth, i</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[3488]

Hi docm,<br /><br />Its almost like a natural laser, a really concentrated for m of energy concentrated in a narrow beam.<br /><br />Strange, but absolutely fascinating stuff. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><br /><br />Thanks docm.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

I've often thought about doing something similar to my neighbor with the streetlight mounted to his garage, on all night long. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[docm]

One of my best friends dad was a big time radio buff (HAM, and also worked for Ford Aerospace before Loral bought 'em out) and extended that to having a HUGELY powerful rig in his camper home (a 40+ footer). <br /><br />Anyhow....one evening these kids were playing a boom box too loud a few spaces over so he decides he's going to teach them a lesson. He targets the area of the boom box, cranks up his transmitter and SCREECH - POOF - STATIC. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[timejump]

Daniel Evans i know it says he's a lead author at cambridge but if what career would this type of research be called and is there something similiar to this in the IT field.

 

[MeteorWayne]

{bump} <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[brigandier]

So can anyone explain how we can be detecting this beam if it only happened 1 million years ago? The article says that the pair of galaxies is 1.4 billion light years away. As someone said in another thread, wouldn't it take 1.4 billion years for the information to reach us?

 

[robnissen]

The article is stating that the event being seen took place over a time period of one million years. Thus, it occurred in 1 million years, beginning 1.4 billion years ago. It is standard convention not to include the time it took for the light to reach us when referring to the duration of an event that we are now just seeing.

 

[brigandier]

Well, this article from space.com says that it began 1 million years ago. Maybe it's just a mistake on their part, though.. since I don't see other articles saying that<br /><br />http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/071217-death-star-galaxy.html

 

[johngeh]

Thank you. If I understand you correctly the observation is a "snapshot" of the progress of the event at a time roughly equal to the distance away that it is (1.4 billion years ago) and the estimated duration is the amount of time prior to that, the event is believed to have started.

 

[robnissen]

You are correct.

 

[weeman]

I see what you're saying, Brigandier. The wording in the sentence is a bit iffy. Most of the people on this board will more than likely understand what they mean in the article, however, the general public may not. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000">Techies: We do it in the dark. </font></strong></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>"Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.</strong><strong>" -Albert Einstein </strong></font></p> </div>