AN ENORMOUS black hole has “erupted like a cosmic volcano” after a 100-million-year nap.
The “dramatic scene” was captured at the heart of a distant galaxy known as J1007+3540.
Inside this galaxy is a supermassive black hole that was silent for 100 million years – before finally restarting its jet emission.
Radio images show the galaxy in what the Royal Astronomical Society calls a “messy, chaotic struggle” – spanning a million lightyears across space.
This struggle is between the black hole’s newly ignited jets and the “crushing pressure” of the massive cluster of galaxies that it lives inside.
Evidence of this space chaos was captured by the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands, as well as India’s upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT).
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Scientists believe that most galaxies play host to a supermassive black hole.
But it’s just a few that produce vast jets of radio-emitting magnetised plasma.
And this galaxy “engine” has evidence of multiple eruptions in an “episodic” way.
They say that it has “turned on, shut down, and restarted after long periods of quiet”.
Radio images snapped by the astronomers show a compact and bright inner jet.
This is reportedly an “unmistakeable sign” that the black hole has recently awakened.
And just outside of this is a “cocoon” of older and faded plasma.
This is believed to be leftover debris from the black hole’s previous eruptions.
But they’ve been “distorted and squeezed by the hostile environment around it,” according to the Royal Astronomical Society.
“It’s like watching a cosmic volcano erupt again after ages of calm,” said lead research Shobha Kumari, of India‘s Midnapore City College.
“Except this one is big enough to carve out structures stretching nearly a million light-years across space.
“This dramatic layering of young jets inside older, exhausted lobes is the signature of an episodic Active Galactic Nuclei.
“A galaxy whose central engine keeps turning on and off over cosmic timescales.”
Scientists say that J1007+3540 is inside a huge galaxy cluster that’s filled with extremely hot gas.
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
Here’s what you need to know…
What is a black hole?
- A black hole is a region of space where absolutely nothing can escape
- That’s because they have extremely strong gravitational effects, which means once something goes into a black hole, it can’t come back out
- They get their name because even light can’t escape once it’s been captured – which is why a black hole is completely dark
What is an event horizon?
- There has to be a point at which you’re so close to a black hole you can’t escape
- Otherwise, literally everything in the universe would have been sucked into one
- The point at which you can no longer escape from a black hole’s gravitational pull is called the event horizon
- The event horizon varies between different black holes, depending on their mass and size
What is a singularity?
- The gravitational singularity is the very centre of a black hole
- It’s a one-dimensional point that contains an incredibly large mass in an infinitely small space
- At the singularity, space-time curves infinitely, and the gravitational pull is infinitely strong
- Conventional laws of physics stop applying at this point
How are black holes created?
- Most black holes are made when a supergiant star dies
- This happens when stars run out of fuel – like hydrogen – to burn, causing the star to collapse
- When this happens, gravity pulls the center of the star inwards quickly and collapses into a tiny ball
- It expands and contracts until one final collapse, causing part of the star to collapse inward thanks to gravity, and the rest of the star to explode outwards
- The remaining central ball is extremely dense, and if it’s especially dense, you get a black hole
- Supermassive black holes are created when multiple black holes merge or when massive gas clouds collapse
It creates enormous amounts of external pressure that is far higher than what you’d normally expect from a radio galaxy.
As these jets push out, they are bent, squeezed, and distorted by interacting with the dense surroundings.
For instance, the northern lobe is “compressed and dramatically distorted”.
And there’s a long and faint tail of emission stretching southwest.
This, scientists say, is evidence that magnetised plasma is being dragged through the cluster, leaving behind “a wispy trail millions of years old”.
It means that the galaxy isn’t just producing jets but is being sculpted by the environment too.
Scientists are hoping to learn more about how black holes turn on and off – and how jets evolve over time.
“J1007+3540 is one of the clearest and most spectacular examples of episodic AGN with jet-cluster interaction,” said co-author Dr Sabyasachi Pal.
“Where the surrounding hot gas bends, compresses, and distorts the jets.”
This research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
