TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Scientists have spotted a supermassive black hole that has dramatically “woken up” after nearly 100 million years of silence, reigniting powerful activity at the heart of a massive galaxy and sending shockwaves through the surrounding cosmic environment.
The Awakening of a Dormant Giant
The black hole’s revival was detected through exceptionally strong radio waves emanating from the galaxy’s center, signaling renewed activity after a long dormant phase.
New analysis shows the object had previously launched enormous plasma jets into space, stretching hundreds of thousands of light-years, before falling silent. Now, these jets have flared back to life, colliding with superheated gas around the galaxy.
“It's like watching a cosmic volcano erupt again after ages of calm,” said study co-author Shobha Kumari, an astronomer at Midnapore City College in India, as quoted by Live Science on January 21, 2026.
“Except this one is big enough to carve out structures stretching nearly a million light-years across space.”
Only 10 to 20 percent of known supermassive black holes emit detectable radio signals. These arise when matter swirling in a disk of dust and plasma around the black hole generates intense magnetic fields, hurling some material outward at near-light speed.
Changes in this disk can cause radio emissions to turn off for millions of years, only to reignite later.
Galaxy J1007+3540: A Case of Episodic Activity
In a study published January 15 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers using the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands identified over 20 galaxy clusters hosting radio galaxies with irregular, stop-and-start emission patterns.
One of the most striking examples was galaxy J1007+3540.
This galaxy contains vast plasma lobes from jet activity around 240 million years ago. Nested inside them, smaller, brighter plasma structures about 140 million years old indicate the central engine briefly reignited after a long pause.
“This dramatic layering of young jets inside older, exhausted lobes is the signature of an episodic AGN — a galaxy whose central engine keeps turning on and off over cosmic timescales,” Kumari said.
Jets Meet Superheated Gas
The renewed emissions are shaped by the intracluster medium, the extremely hot gas filling the space between galaxies in a cluster. This gas bends and compresses the plasma jets, giving each lobe a distinct, distorted appearance.
“J1007+3540 is one of the clearest and most spectacular examples of episodic AGN with jet-cluster interaction, where the surrounding hot gas bends, compresses, and distorts the jets,” said co-author Surajit Pal, a physicist at the Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences in India.
By studying J1007+3540, researchers hope to better understand how often supermassive black holes cycle between active and dormant phases and how their outbursts reshape their cosmic surroundings.
The team plans high-resolution observations to map how the revived jets propagate through the hot gas of the galaxy cluster.
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