NASA found a supermassive black hole spinning in the wrong direction

Astronomers have discovered a puzzling cosmic anomaly – a supermassive black hole in the galaxy NGC 5084 that appears completely tilted relative to its galactic structure.

NASA researchers have identified a surprising black hole in the galaxy NGC 5084 that appears to be "upside down," rotating at an unusual angle relative to the rest of the galaxy. NGC 5084 has been studied for years, but the unexpected orientation of this black hole remained hidden in archives of old data. The breakthrough came when scientists used new image analysis techniques to reexamine archival data from the Chandra X-ray telescope.

Using these advanced methods, astronomers have discovered a remarkable feature: four long plumes of plasma—hot, charged gases—emitting from the galaxy. One pair of plumes extends above and below the plane of the galaxy, a common pattern in some galaxies. But the second pair, which is located within the plane of the galaxy and forms an X shape with the first pair, is highly unusual, because galaxies typically exhibit only one or two such plumes.

The method that revealed these unexpected features of the galaxy NGC 5084 was developed by Alejandro Serrano Borloff and his colleagues to detect low-luminosity X-ray emissions in data from the world's most powerful X-ray telescope. What they saw in the Chandra data seemed so strange, so they immediately checked to verify it, searching archived data from other telescopes and requesting observations from two powerful ground-based observatories.

The second surprising pair of anomalies was a strong hint that this galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole, but there could be other explanations. Archived data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the ALMA telescope in Chile have revealed another strange thing about NGC 5084: a small inner disk of dust that rotates around the center of the galaxy. This also suggests the presence of a black hole there, and surprisingly, it rotates at an angle of 90 degrees to the rotation of the entire galaxy: the disk and the black hole are, in a sense, lying on their sides.

The subsequent study of NGC 5084 allowed researchers to examine it using a wide electromagnetic spectrum – from visible light (Hubble) to longer wavelengths (ALMA and EVLA in New Mexico).

"It was like looking at a crime scene through many different types of light," said Borloff. "When you put all the images together, you can see how much NGC 5084 has changed in its recent past."

"It is extraordinary to discover a pair of X-ray bursts in a single galaxy," added astrophysicist Pamela Markham. "The combination of their unusual cross-like structure and the 'reverse' disk gives us unique insights into the history of this galaxy."

for the scientific article

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