Astronomers witness something spectacular in Space: Galaxies are at war, attacking each other at 1.8 million km per hour

Astronomers have seen something amazing in Space. Two galaxies are attacking each other like a duel.

The galaxies are moving toward each other very fast at over 1.8 million km per hour. Scientists saw this using telescopes for almost four years.

One galaxy is shooting powerful radiation at the other. It is pushing away gas clouds and stopping new stars from forming.

Researchers call this fight a “cosmic joust”. These galaxies, which are 11 billion light-years away, are slowly merging into one big galaxy.

This rare event gives scientists a chance to understand how galaxies changed in the early universe when such clashes were more common.

“It’s an exciting field to study. Research like this can teach us more about the birth of new galaxies and observe how they evolve over time.” astrophysicist Dong-Woo Kim told CNN.

Powerful telescopes

Researchers are using Very Large Telescopes. They have found that a bright core, called a quasar, in one galaxy is damaging another nearby galaxy. The quasar, powered by a supermassive black hole, releases strong radiation—about a thousand times stronger than the radiation in our Milky Way.

“At first, we just knew there was some molecular gas between the (attacking galaxy’s) quasar and us. It’s only after, when we started to look with bigger telescopes, that we detected there were actually two galaxies,” researcher Pasquier Noterdaeme told the publication.

This radiation breaks apart hydrogen in gas clouds that form stars. As a result, the clouds become too small and thin to create new stars. Extra material from the second galaxy feeds the quasar, giving it more energy.

For the first time, scientists directly saw how a quasar’s radiation affects nearby star-forming gas. It was something only in their imagination before.

Scientists studied this quasar as it showed rare features among thousands of distant space signals. These signals reveal what faraway objects are made of.

Quasar light is so strong that it hides nearby galaxies. That’s why spotting one like this is as rare as “finding a needle in a haystack”, per study coauthor Sergei Balashev.