A Sideways Black Hole

Talk about a space oddity!

This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.

At the center of most galaxies is a huge black hole. But are all black holes created equally? Nope!

Enter Alejandro Borlaff and team. They reexamined noisy space data from over thirty years ago against data from our current telescopes.

So what did they find? At the center of the galaxy N-G-C 5-0-8-4 is a supermassive black hole! But that’s not all… it’s rotated ninety degrees in relation to the rest of the galaxy!

This data from three decades ago turned out to be a lens into the formation of galaxies. The next mystery is what caused the black hole to be tilted…

Talk about a curious case of crooked cosmos!


Reference: Alejandro S. Borlaff et al SAUNAS. II. Discovery of Cross-shaped X-Ray Emission and a Rotating Circumnuclear Disk in the Supermassive S0 Galaxy NGC 5084. 2024 ApJ 977 238 doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad7c4b