Astronomy has come a long way in 20 years. Just 25 years ago we were finally finding tiny little moons in orbit around our solar system neighbors. Now, because of super-advanced, bad-assed, hyper-awesome astronomical devices, we can actually view things going on millions of light years away in other galaxies. (Well, technically things that were going on millions years ago in another galaxy).

In this instance, a system of galaxies called 3C321, the larger galaxy is bombarding a smaller companion galaxy with cosmic radiation. It is a widely accepted theory that most, if not all, galaxies contain a Supermassive Black Hole at their galactic core. Just as the Moon orbits Earth and Earth orbits the Sun, it is speculated that all stars withing a given galaxy must also orbit something. Since we cannot directly view the center of our galaxy (there are lots of stars, dust, and other particulate matter obscuring the view), we must observe it through X-Ray detection and by other means. Something is definitely there.

Just like stars, black holes and supermassive black holes emit energy in the form of cosmic radiation, X-Rays, gamma rays, and the like. The dose of radiation is so massive that, where it to reach Earth it would be lethal on a planetary scale, even millions of light years away. Fortunately for us, because of their physical make-up and the gravitational distortions involved, black holes only emit their energy from their poles, so this energy is directed away from the object in a relatively focused beam rather than in all directions like a normal star.

Here, the radiation from the larger galaxy is blasting directly into a smaller galaxy about 20,000 light years distant (about the distance of the Earth to the Milky Way's galactic core). The radiation is expected to not only destroy the stars, but the massive dose of energy could quite possibly provide the necessary energy for new stars and planets to form.

Because of human advances in astronomy, we are going to be seeing a lot more astronomical phenomena just like this. Who knows, we may even be looking down the barrel of a supermassive black hole pointed right at Earth!

Merry Christmas!!!