WASHINGTON — The latest act of senseless violence caught on tape is cosmic in scope: A black hole in a “death star galaxy” blasting a neighboring galaxy with a deadly jet of radiation and energy.
A fleet of space and ground telescopes has captured images of this cosmic violence, which people have never witnessed before, according to a new study released Monday by NASA.
“It’s like a bully, a black-hole bully, punching the nose of a passing galaxy,” said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, who wasn’t involved in the research.
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 Earth, orbiting around each other.
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.
And what would that do life on our planet?
“Decompose it,” Tyson said.
He added that there are two main lessons to be learned: “This is a reminder that you are not alone in the universe. You are not isolated. You are not an island.”
And “avoid black holes when you can.”
