Astronomers have caught a rare cosmic event in action—a supermassive black hole “waking up” after a long period of inactivity. Using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the Very Large Array (VLA), an international team has observed the earliest stages of a black hole beginning to feed on surrounding material and launch jets of energy.
This moment offers scientists an unprecedented view of how black holes start influencing their surroundings and shaping galaxies.
The research, led by Francesco Ubertosi from the University of Bologna and Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF/IRA), focused on a galaxy cluster called CHIPS 1911+4455, located about 6 billion light-years away.
The central black hole in this cluster only “switched on” roughly a thousand years ago—an instant in cosmic terms.
“This is like watching a sleeping giant wake up,” Ubertosi said. “We’re seeing the black hole before it has had time to make big changes to its environment, which is incredibly rare.”
The VLBA’s ultra-sharp vision revealed that the black hole’s jets stretch only about 100 light-years from its core.
While that might sound huge, jets from older black holes can be tens of thousands of light-years long.
These “baby jets” confirm that the system is extremely young. The radio signal also shows a distinctive peak shape, another sign of its early stage.
Co-author Myriam Gitti explained that because the jets are so new, they haven’t yet disrupted the hot gas in the galaxy cluster.
This means scientists can study the “before” picture—what conditions are like before black hole activity begins to reshape a galaxy.
Earlier studies of CHIPS 1911+4455 revealed that the gas in the cluster’s core is cooling quickly, which may have provided the fuel to restart the black hole.
The system also appears to have undergone a recent merger with another galaxy, which could have helped trigger the black hole’s awakening.
Interestingly, the galaxy around this black hole is already a stellar powerhouse, forming 140–190 times more stars per year than the Milky Way. VLA observations showed faint “whiskers” of radio emission that match star-forming regions seen in Hubble Space Telescope images, likely caused by massive stars and supernova explosions.
By studying such a young black hole, scientists hope to better understand the link between black holes and galaxy evolution. Most research has focused on mature systems where black hole activity has been ongoing for millions of years.
“This is a chance to watch the process unfold from the start,” Ubertosi said. “It’s like having a time machine for one of the most important forces shaping our universe.”
The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal, marking an important step toward understanding how supermassive black holes influence star formation and the growth of the largest cosmic structures.
Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
