A cosmic anomaly detected in a distant galaxy could portend a terrifying future for life in the Milky Way. The discovery suggests that our models of galactic evolution could be inaccurate.

Astronomers have detected an erupting supermassive black hole producing some of the largest jets ever seen bursting from a galaxy with the same shape as our own. The galaxy in question also possesses vastly more dark matter than the Milky Way, hinting at a connection between active black holes and the abundance of the universe's most mysterious "stuff."

The jets erupting from the massive spiral galaxy 2MASX J23453268−0449256 (J2345-0449), which is three times the size of the Milky Way and is located 947 million light-years away, are themselves 6 million light-years long. And if the supermassive black hole in J2345-0449, which has an estimated mass equivalent to 1.4 billion suns, can erupt so violently, could our galaxy's supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) also blow its top?