NASA spots 16 'Death Star' black holes blasting powerful beams at multiple targets

Astronomers have witnessed vast black holes blasting powerful beams of particles into space, and then changing aim and firing at new celestial targets. 

This cosmic firing range, which is reminiscent of the destruction of the planet Alderaan by the Death Star in Star Wars, could help scientists determine the impacts black holes have on their surrounding galaxies and beyond.

The team behind the observations studied 16 erupting supermassive black holes using NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a system of ten robotic radio telescopes that are operated remotely from Socorro, New Mexico. Doing so allowed the scientists to discover that jets of supermassive black holes can change directions by as much as almost 90 degrees. 

"We found that about a third of the beams are now pointing in completely different directions than before," team leader Francesco Ubertosi of the University of Bologna said in a statement. "These Death Star black holes are swiveling around and pointing at new targets, like the fictional space station in Star Wars."

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The team monitored the direction in which the supermassive black holes were aiming their jets of high-energy particles, which were blasted out at speeds approaching that of light as they reached distances of many light-years from their sources. They also used X-ray data from Chandra to examine two cavities or "bubbles" in interstellar gas that indicated the direction the jets were firing in millions of years ago. Comparing the two data sets allowed them to ascertain how the supermassive black holes had reoriented their jets. 

This reorientation takes place over timescales as long as one million years to a few tens of millions of years. That may sound incredibly slow, but factoring in how long these cosmic titans have existed, it is relatively short.