Scientists have found an unusual black hole: it glows and turns over

An international team of astrophysicists, including scientists from the University of Boulder, said they had determined

The magnetic field lines running through the black hole appear to have been turned upside down, causing a rapid but short-lived change in the object's properties.It's like if the compasses on Earth suddenly start pointing south instead of north.

The results, published in the Astrophysical Journal, could change the way scientists think about supermassive black holes, said study co-author Nicholas Skepi.

Skepi, along with Mitchel Begelman and Jason Dexter, first theorized that such a magnetic trigger could be possible as early as 2021.

A new study supports this idea.In it, a team led by Sibasish Lah of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center collected the most comprehensive data on the object. The team relied on observations from seven telescopes on the ground and in space.

Observations suggest that the magnetic fields of supermassive black holes may be much more dynamic than scientists thought. 

This occurs because objects are constantlyattract gas from outer space, and some of this gas also carries magnetic fields. If the galaxy being studied attracts magnetic fields that are in the opposite direction to its own—say, pointing south instead of north—then its own field will weaken.

The team hypothesized that this caused the black hole's magnetic field to become so weak that it turned upside down.

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