[tt] NYT: Cosmic Clash

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Cosmic Clash
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/science/space/18blac.html

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Astronomers have released an image of what looks like galactic
warfare. In a symphony of X-rays (purple), radio waves (blue) and
starlight (red), the composite image shows a jet of energy shooting
out of a galaxy and hitting its neighbor to the right before
splattering into intergalactic space.

The galaxies, with the collective name 3C321, orbit each other about
20,000 light-years apart in the constellation Serpens. Each is
thought to harbor a supermassive black hole at its center, where
gravity, pressure and unworldly magnetic fields squeeze matter and
energy out into space like toothpaste from a tube.

The astronomers, led by Dan Evans of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., combined data from the Hubble
Space Telescope; the Chandra X-Ray Observatory; the Very Large Array
radio telescope in Socorro, N.M.; and the Merlin radiotelescope
array operated by the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Britain.