A team of scientists at the Royal Astronomical Society has reclassified a galaxy after they discovered that a supermassive blackhole has changed its direction and is directly facing toward the Earth.
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The galaxy, 657 million light-years away from the Earth has been named as PBC J2333.9-2343.
The research published on March 21 has revealed that the galaxy has now been classified as a giant radio galaxy that is four million light years across, nearly 40 times the size of the Milky Way. The galaxy happens to have a blazar, an active galactic nucleus, with a relativistic jet (also called as supermassive blackhole) in its core.
Blazars are very high-energy objects and are considered to be one of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe. The research also revealed that the galaxy has changed its direction by 90 degrees, pointing directly towards the blue planet.
Dr Lorena Hernandez-Garcia, spokesperson of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), said, "We started to study this galaxy as it showed peculiar properties. Our hypothesis was that the relativistic jet of its supermassive black hole had changed its direction, and to confirm that idea we had to carry out a lot of observations".
{{/usCountry}}Dr Lorena Hernandez-Garcia, spokesperson of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), said, "We started to study this galaxy as it showed peculiar properties. Our hypothesis was that the relativistic jet of its supermassive black hole had changed its direction, and to confirm that idea we had to carry out a lot of observations".
{{/usCountry}}"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", she added.
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Scientists do not yet know what caused the drastic change in direction of the galaxy, though they speculate that PBC J2333.9-2343 might have collided with another galaxy. It is also not clear how the direction of the black hole will affect our galaxy.