Astronomers have captured one of the clearest views yet of a supermassive black hole coming back to life after an extraordinarily long period of silence.
At the center of a distant radio galaxy called J1007+3540, a black hole that had been quiet for nearly 100 million years has suddenly restarted its powerful jets, unleashing energy across almost a million light-years of space.
Scientists describe the scene as similar to a cosmic volcano erupting after ages of calm.
The discovery was made using detailed radio observations from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands and India’s upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope.
The findings have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Most large galaxies host supermassive black holes at their centers, but only a small fraction produce enormous jets of charged particles that glow in radio waves.
What makes J1007+3540 special is that it shows clear signs of repeated outbursts. Its black hole has switched on, shut down, and now switched on again, leaving behind visible traces of its past activity.
The new radio images reveal a bright, compact jet close to the galaxy’s core. This is the unmistakable sign that the black hole has recently awakened.
Surrounding this young jet is a much larger, faint cloud of old plasma—leftover material from earlier eruptions that took place tens or even hundreds of millions of years ago.
These older structures have been twisted and squeezed into strange shapes, showing just how violent the galaxy’s environment is.
According to lead researcher Shobha Kumari of Midnapore City College in India, the layered structure tells a dramatic story.
The fresh jets are pushing their way through the remains of previous eruptions, creating a striking snapshot of a black hole that refuses to stay quiet forever.
The environment around J1007+3540 plays a crucial role in shaping what astronomers see. The galaxy sits inside a massive cluster filled with extremely hot gas. This gas creates intense pressure, far greater than what most radio galaxies experience.
As the newly restarted jets expand outward, they are bent, compressed, and distorted by the surrounding material.
The LOFAR images show that one side of the galaxy’s radio emission is especially crushed and curved, as if the jet material is being pushed sideways by the dense gas. Observations from the upgraded GMRT reveal that this region contains very old particles that have lost much of their energy, further evidence of how harsh the cluster environment is.
A long, faint tail of radio emission stretching away from the galaxy adds another piece to the puzzle. It suggests that magnetized material from the black hole’s earlier activity is being dragged through the cluster, leaving behind a ghostly trail that records millions of years of motion and interaction.
Systems like J1007+3540 are extremely valuable to astronomers. They show that black hole activity is not steady or gentle, but episodic and explosive.
By studying galaxies like this, scientists are learning how black holes turn on and off, how their jets evolve over immense timescales, and how the surrounding cosmic environment can shape—and sometimes suffocate—their growth.
Source: KSR.
