Supermassive black hole seen ‘awakening’ for 1st time
- A galaxy 300 million light years from Earth has started shining brightly – a sign that the once-sleeping ‘giant monster’ has begun to feast
Astronomers have been able to observe a supermassive black hole waking up and setting the heart of its host galaxy alight for the first time, the European Southern Observatory said on Tuesday.
The galaxy 300 million light years from Earth in the Virgo constellation had been quiet for decades until late 2019, when it suddenly began to shine brighter than ever before.
The centre of the galaxy – where a supermassive black hole is believed to be squatting – since then has been radiating a variety of rays.
“This behaviour is unprecedented,” Paula Sanchez Saez, an European Southern Observatory astronomer and first author of a new study in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, said in a statement.
The “most tangible option” to explain this brightening is that the astronomers were watching “the activation of a massive black hole in real time”, study co-author Lorena Hernandez Garcia said.
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‘Supermassive’ black hole at the centre of our galaxy viewed for the first time
Most galaxies – including our own Milky Way – are believed to have a supermassive black hole at their centre.
