SPACE — In a distant galaxy, a supermassive black hole spewing radiation at close to the speed of light has shifted its angle by 90 degrees. A sharp turn that confused the physicist sent the catastrophe heading straight for Earth.
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are hungry black holes at the core of many other galaxies. They accumulate matter and emit jets of high-energy particles called relativistic emission. AGN is classified according to which part of it points towards Earth.
PBC J2333.9-2343, a large galaxy about 4 million light years away, was previously classified as a radio galaxy. That is, the radiation beam of the giant AGN is directed perpendicular to our line of sight. But new research results published March 20, 2023 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society reclassified the galaxy as a blazar. It was the black hole’s beam now pointing directly at Earth. “This means that the galactic beam shifted dramatically,” the researchers wrote in the paper.
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“Our hypothesis is that the relativistic jet from the supermassive black hole has changed its course, and to confirm that idea we had to make a lot of observations,” said lead author of the study, Lorena Hernandez-Garcia. He is an astrophysicist at
Millennium Institute of Astrophysics.
Hernandez-Garcia 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 has the hallmarks of a blazar: It gets bright and dim like a blazar, and has a similar radiance. So, they concluded that it was most likely a blazar.
The researchers also observed two lobes, which are areas where the AGN jet interacts with the surrounding gas. As a result, several previous jets have left trails. “The lobe of this blazar is very old. It is a relic of past activity, whereas structures located closer to the nucleus represent younger and more active jets,” Hernandez-Garcia said.
These inactive lobes are evidence that the jet has actually changed direction. This sort of thing had never happened or was known before for a galactic jet appearing in a different place. But in the previous example, there are two sets of lobes, meaning two separate jets that turn on and off. For PBC J2333.9-2343, it appears to have come from only one source of activity, and tactics have changed.
What caused this big change? Astronomers are still trying to reveal it. Current theory states it was a galactic merger, where another massive galaxy collided with PBC J2333.9-2343, driving the orientation of everything in it. More observations are needed to unravel the mystery. Source: LiveScience
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