J1007+3540 Restarts After 100 Million Years, Firing 4.7 Million-Light-Year Plasma Lobes
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 2
J1007+3540 Restarts After 100 Million Years, Firing 4.7 Million-Light-Year Plasma Lobes
1 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 2
Summary
Radio observations show supermassive black hole J1007+3540 restarted after about 100 million years of dormancy, with fresh jets appearing inside much older plasma lobes from an earlier active phase.
LOFAR at 144 MHz and India’s uGMRT at 400 MHz let astronomers separate the two outbursts: outer lobes span about 1.45 megaparsecs and are roughly 240 million years old, while the inner structure is about 140 million years old.
The new jets are not expanding cleanly. Cluster gas is bending and compressing them, leaving a curved northern lobe and a southern S-shaped jet that runs about 250 kiloparsecs before fading into a tail reaching roughly 600 kiloparsecs.
The single-image view of both fossil lobes and active jets gives direct evidence that some supermassive black holes switch on, shut down and restart over hundreds of millions of years, while their surroundings can strongly reshape the outflows.
What cosmic event awakened a black hole after its 100-million-year slumber?
How do these periodic black hole eruptions dictate the life and death of stars within a galaxy?
Could the dormant black hole at our own galaxy's center suddenly erupt in the same way?
J1007+3540’s Restarted Black Hole: A Case Study in Episodic AGN Activity and Jet-Cluster Interactions
Overview
The galaxy J1007+3540 is undergoing a dramatic transformation as its central supermassive black hole has restarted its activity after a long period of dormancy. This renewed phase is marked by the eruption of immense jets of radio plasma, creating a powerful outburst that offers valuable clues about how black holes behave over time and how galaxies evolve. The event provides astronomers with a vivid example of episodic black hole behavior, showing that such systems are essential for understanding how often black holes switch between active and quiet phases, and how their powerful jets change as they age.