Object mistaken as a galaxy is actually a black hole pointed directly at Earth

By Briley Lewis published about 14 hours ago

An object once thought to be a radio galaxy is actually an active black hole that changed angles to point directly at Earth, new research suggests.



An illustration of a blazar -- a ravenous, supermassive black hole shooting radiation toward Earth at near-light-speed (Image credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech)

In a distant galaxy, a supermassive black hole spewing radiation at near light speed has shifted its angle by a whopping 90 degrees to point directly toward Earth — a sharp turn that's puzzling physicists.

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the hungry black holes at the cores of many other galaxies, and they accrete matter and spew powerful jets of high-energy particles known as relativistic jets. AGN are classified according to what part of the AGN is pointed toward Earth.

PBC J2333.9-2343, a large galaxy about 4 million light-years away, was previously classified as a radio galaxy, meaning its AGN's gargantuan jets of radiation were pointed perpendicular to our line of sight. But new research published March 20 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society reclassifies the galaxy as a blazar, meaning the black hole's jets are now pointed directly at Earth. This means the galaxy's jets shifted by a "dramatic" degree, the researchers wrote in the study.



The galaxy PBC J2333.9-2343 is the bright spot at the center of this image, taken by the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS survey. (Image credit: Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii)

Hernández-García and colleagues observed PBC J2333.9-2343 across nearly the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma-rays. Their observations showed that this galaxy had characteristics typical of blazars: It brightened and dimmed like a blazar, and it had similar jets. Thus, they concluded that the object was most likely a blazar.

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https://www.livescience.com/object-mistaken-as-a-galaxy-is-actually-a-black-hole-pointed-directly-at-earth