clipped from: www.abc.net.au   
Larry O'Hanlon

Astronomers have spotted a distant galaxy zapping its smaller neighbour with a deadly particle beam.

zapping galaxy
The jet from a black hole at the centre of the main galaxy (lower left), strikes the edge of another galaxy (upper right), the first time researchers have seen anything like it

The beam is a jet of particles moving at near light-speed out of a super-massive black hole at the centre of the larger galaxy.

The beam has smashed into the nearby second galaxy, where it is probably destroying an untold number of planets.

"There will be bad effects on earth-like planets," says astronomer Dr Daniel Evans of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

the jet's smashing into the other galaxy's clouds of gas and dust could very well trigger the clouds to contract and give birth to new stars there, says researcher Dr Martin Hardcastle of the UK's University of Hertfordshire
"Its long-term legacy is that it could produce a new generation of stars in the companion galaxy," says Hardcastle