A supermassive blackhole has changed direction and now facing Earth, say scientists
Supermassive blackhole
A supermassive blackhole has changed its direction and is now facing Earth, scientists at the Royal Astronomical Society discovered, after they reclassified a galaxy that is 657 million light-years away from the blue planet.
According to scientists, this galaxy— called PBC J2333.9-2343— has a blazar (active galactic nucleus) in its core with a relativistic jet (which is also known as a super-massive black hole).
Blazars are very high energy objects and are considered to be one of the most powerful phenomena in the universe.
Researchers have said that the galaxy now stretches nearly 4 million light-years across — nearly 40 times the size of the Milky Way.
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Their research published on March 21 has revealed that the galaxy—which was earlier classified as a radio galaxy—drastically turned its direction by up to 90 degrees, and is now directly pointing towards Earth.
“We started to study this galaxy as it showed peculiar properties,” spokesperson, Dr Lorena Hernández-García said.
"Our hypothesis was that the relativistic jet of its supermassive black holehad changed its direction, and to confirm that idea we had to carry out a lot of observations.”
“The fact that we see the nucleus is not feeding the lobes anymore means that they are very old. They are the relics of past activity, whereas the structures located closer to the nucleus represent younger and active jets.”
Scientists are unsure what has caused the change in direction and how it could affect our galaxy.
They suspect that PBC J2333.9-2343 might have collided with another galaxy, causingit to shift its direction.
Notably, this black hole is not the only threat that the Earth faces. According to new data published in The Astronomical Journal., three near-Earth asteroids (NEA) werediscovered in the inner solar systemand could pose a serious risk to Earth.
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