December 9, 2025
1 min read
X-ray space telescopes caught a supermassive blackhole flinging matter into space at a fifth of the speed of light
By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner
And illustration shows the black hole within the galaxy NGC 3783 as it erupts.
ESA
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Supermassive black holes are the monsters of the universe, so it is perhaps only fitting that astronomers discovered one of these behemoths unleashing a bright x-ray flare that one of the researchers, Matteo Guainazzi, described as “almost too big to imagine.”
Within hours of erupting, the blast faded, and the black hole began to whip up winds more powerful than anything we can imagine on Earth and flinging material into space at 134 million miles per hour—a fifth of the speed of light. For comparison, plasma ejected during a coronal mass ejection from the sun typically travels at a mere three million mph.
To study the black hole, astronomers used two x-ray space telescopes: the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) XMM-Newton and the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, which is a collaboration between the ESA, NASA and Japan’s space agency, JAXA. Lurking at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 3783, the supermassive blach ole—weighing the equivalent of 30 million suns—powers the galaxy’s heart, a region known as an active galactic nucleus.
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According to Guainazzi, tangled magnetic fields in this region may have suddenly “untwisted,” generating the winds. Knowing more about active galactic nuclei, and the way that they generate such powerful jets and winds, is key to understanding how galaxies form and evolve over time, the researchers say.
The research was published on Tuesday in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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