Black holes are some of the strangest objects in space. These balls of dense matter are scattered throughout the Milky Way and have gravitational fields so powerful, nothing can escape their gaping maws—not even light. While we can’t see a black hole head-on like we would a star or a planet, we’ve learned a lot by observing how they affect the fabric of space around them. Now astronomers have discovered something about these cosmic enigmas that’s upended our understanding of them.
In a new study published May 5 in The Astrophysical Journal, an international team of astrophysicists found that black holes can flip the direction of their magnetic fields. This spontaneous reversal was noticed when a black hole in a galaxy 236 million light-years away suddenly got 100 times brighter before simmering down. This discovery could mean that black holes have a much more dynamic nature than previously thought—and may even help us find more black holes exhibiting the same behavior.
When a black hole sucks in gas and dust from galaxies around it, these materials swirl and fall into it and gather to form a rotating disk that generates radiation scientists can see from billions of light-years away.
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