The jets emanate from the bizarre object called SS 433, located in a double star system over 10,000 light-years away. Material from one star is spilling onto a compact, massive companion -- either a black hole or a neutron star. This whirlpool of matter becomes so hot that particles and radiation are expelled in a pair of powerful narrow beams zipping across space at one-quarter the speed of light.

These death-star beams are slamming into a wide shell of gasses hurled into space 10,000 years ago by the supernova explosion that gave birth to the voracious neutron star or black hole. The beams are stretching the once spherical shell of glowing gas into an egg-shaped supernova remnant 350 light-years long. This newly discovered process may explain peculiar shapes seen around other supernova remnants.

The system SS 433 is unique because it may be the only visible example of these super-speed jets in action. The extraordinarily powerful jet may have fired-up unusually early in the life of the stellar duo, giving it an opportunity to plow into the much slower moving supernova remnant before it completely expanded into space. This wild activity may only be a brief episode in the fireworks between a black hole or neutron star and its stellar companion.

The observations were made by Samar Safi-Harb at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center who studied X-rays emitted from the cosmic collision with an Earth-orbiting satellite called the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). She presented the new findings at a recent meeting of high-energy astrophysicists at the Center.

"For the first time we are seeing a lot of action within a supernova remnant, we are witnessing the effects of the amazing energetics of a binary star embedded inside," Saif-Harb told SPACE.com.

For years astronomers have used radio and X-ray telescopes to view what seems to be a huge elongated supernova remnant, called SNR W50. But they could not determine whether jets from SS 433 were truly stretching out the remnant. Because the jets corkscrew through space, like water from a whirling lawn sprinkler, some astronomers thought they may have even created the illusion of a supernova remnant.

Observing this region with the RXTE, Safi-Harb found that the jets slamming into the inner walls of the remnant are producing X-ray radiation strictly through collision between the high-speed particles and the atoms of the gas. This provided Safi-Harb with the evidence that the supernova shell is not naturally elongated but is being pounded on and pushed by the powerful beams.

Astronomers have suspected that cosmic rays, which constantly bombard Earth, may come from shocks within supernova remnants. But the jet collision shows a completely new mechanism for how to propel subatomic particles to near light-speeds inside these remnants.

Conventional wisdom is that the supernova remnant should be spherical. But typically, astronomers see loops, barrels and arcs, among other shapes. It has been thought that these shapes reflected the complex interstellar environment into which they expand. This could be caused by the dense clumps, tunnels, walls and cavities in the thin gas between the stars. However some supernova remnants show patterns that can't be explained by the complicated structure of the interstellar medium alone, causing astronomers to look for a new theory to interpret them. Now RXTE has confirmed an alternative process.