‘Uranus of black holes’ tipped onto its facet by ‘thriller’ cosmic occasion

An ancient supermassive black hole, spanning more than 200,000 light-years, has left NASA astronomers searching for answers after it tilted over on its side in a surprising move

A mysterious cosmic event has left experts puzzled after a supermassive black hole 80 million years away has been discovered tipped over on its side.

Astronomers are unsure how it happened, especially since evidence suggests it wasn’t as oriented as always observed. The observations are based on data trending back three decades, revealing how preserved data can be used to piece together a galaxy’s history, further back in time than we are actually able to see.

The galaxy NGC 5084 has been around for centuries. In 1785, it was first catalogued by William Herschel and has been well studied. It’s what is known as a lenticular galaxy – one that’s somewhere between a spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way, and an elliptical galaxy, just sort of a fuzzy blob with no structure.

NGC 5084 has a disk, but no large-scale spiral arms discernable. It’s also very big, spanning more than 200,000 light-years across with a mass estimated at 1.3 trillion Suns. It’s one of the largest lenticular galaxies every measured. However, there isn’t a lot known about this supermassive black hole in the galactic centre.

However, research led by Alejandro Borlaff of the NASA Ames Research Center found archival observations that could be tapped to find out more about the galaxy’s core.

For instance, the researchers were testing some new image analysis techniques on data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory when they noticed something very strange: Four long plumes of X-ray-emitting plasma streaking away from the galactic center in the shape of an X.

Such plumes are evidence of past galactic center activity. When a black hole slurps up matter from the space around it, not all the material ends up disappearing forever beyond the event horizon. Scientists believe some is diverted along the magnetic field lines outside the black hole to the black hole’s poles, where it is launched into space as jets of plasma.

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