A black hole in a "death star galaxy" blasting a neighboring galaxy with a deadly jet of radiation and energy.This struck me because black holes, allegedly, form all the time, whenever a star massive enough implodes, forms a singularity, and then starts sucking in all the matter around it, feeding on it and growing in size and potency.
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The telescope images show the bully galaxy shooting a stream of deadly radiation particles into the lower section of the other galaxy, which is about one-tenth its size. Both are about 8.2 billion trillion miles from here, orbiting around each other.
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Tens of millions of stars, including those with orbiting planets, are likely in the path of the deadly jet, said study co-author Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.
If Earth were in the way -- and it's not -- the high-energy particles and radiation of the jet would in a matter of months strip away the planet's protective ozone layer and compress the protective magnetosphere, said Evans. That would then allow the sun and the jet itself to bombard the planet with high-energy particles.
And what would that do life on the planet?
"Decompose it," Tyson said.
"Sterilize it," Evans piped in.
This means that at any moment, somewhere in space, a black hole might form and start spewing its deadly radiations towards the Milky Way galaxy, and if Earth were in that path, we'd be toast.
There is a silver lining, although maybe not for the potential life forms currently getting sterilized and decomposing under the influence of those gamma rays:
The good news is that eventually an area of hot gas that gets hit and compressed by this mysterious jet -- astronomers are still baffled by what's in it and how it works -- over millions and billions of years can form stars, Tyson said.
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