"Bully" black hole blasts nearby galaxy: NASA

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A "death star" galaxy is sending out a powerful jet of particles and magnetic radiation that is likely obliterating any possible life in its broad path, notably in a nearby galaxy, astronomers said on Monday.

They said the two galaxies appear to be merging and the disturbance in the magnetic field caused by this movement may have awakened a dormant, supermassive black hole in one of the galaxies.

They have images of the deadly blast, spurting out from a system known as 3C321.

Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory show both galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, and 3C321, the larger galaxy, is emitting this stream of energy and particles. The unnamed smaller galaxy apparently has swung into the path of this jet.

The astronomers agree that both galaxies are likely to have planetary systems but nothing resembling life on any planet could survive the blast. While such jets have been seen before, this is the first time one has been observed battering another galaxy, the researchers report in The Astrophysical Journal.

"First its enormous gamma ray radiation field is likely to destroy the ozone layer," Dan Evans of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the study, told reporters in a telephone briefing.

And the magnetic field of any planet would be compressed, leaving it vulnerable to solar storms from its star.

"There are tens to hundreds of millions of stars in the path. Some of those stars almost certainly have planets," said Martin Hardcastle an astrophysicist at Britain's University of Hertfordshire.