A supermassive black hole in a distant disk galaxy is behaving in a way that defies expectations, carving out a graceful S in surrounding space instead of firing straight-line beams. About 450 million light-years away, its plasma jets appear to twist and sweep like a cosmic sprinkler, hinting that the black hole and its environment are wobbling on a galactic scale. I see this discovery as a rare chance to watch feedback from a single object ripple across an entire galaxy in real time.
The galaxy-wide jet that refuses to fly straight
At the heart of this story is a black hole whose outflow does not simply point in one direction and stay there, but instead bends into a broad, S-shaped pattern that stretches across its host galaxy. Radio observations show that, rather than forming the narrow, linear beams astronomers usually expect, the plasma is fountaining outward and then curving, as if the launch direction is slowly drifting with time. About 450 m light-years away in cosmic terms, that makes this system close enough for detailed mapping yet far enough that the entire jet structure fits into a single field of view.
Instead of just pointing in one direction, like most black hole jets, this one is sweeping in a curvy S-shaped pathway that traces a helical arc through interstellar gas. The pattern suggests that the jet’s launch axis is not fixed, but precessing, so the outflow gradually paints out a double curve on either side of the galaxy. I find that behavior striking because it implies a long-lived, stable wobble rather than a one-off blast, a conclusion supported by high resolution radio data that reveal the twisting plasma structure and connect it back to the active nucleus at the center of the disk.
How a wobbling disk sculpts an S in space
The most compelling explanation for this strange geometry is that the black hole’s accretion disk is itself wobbling, slowly changing the direction in which material is launched. When a disk is tilted relative to the black hole’s spin, general relativity predicts that it can precess, much like a spinning top that traces a circle as it slows. As the disk precesses, the jet direction follows, so the outflow gradually sweeps across the sky and leaves behind a sinuous trail. In this case, the S-shaped radio emission suggests that the jet’s direction slowly wobbles over time, a behavior that matches what I would expect from a misaligned, long-lived disk.
There is precedent for this kind of motion in other extreme systems. A neutron-star jet observed in our own galaxy shows a structure with an S shape, created as the jet changes direction due to the wobbling of the disk of hot gas around the compact object, a pattern that has been likened to a garden sprinkler in space and that has been seen with black holes before but never with neutron stars, according to neutron-star observations. The new galaxy-wide jet appears to be a scaled-up version of the same basic physics, with the added twist that the wobble is now powerful enough to reshape gas across tens of thousands of light-years.
A Jet with Enough Power to Halt Star Formation
What makes this object more than a geometric curiosity is the sheer impact of its outflow on the host galaxy. The radio data indicate a Jet with Enough Power to Halt Star Formation, as the plasma plows through the disk and strips away the cold, dense gas that would otherwise collapse into new stars. In the system under scrutiny, the jet is not confined to a narrow channel above and below the galaxy, but instead sweeps across the disk itself, carving out lanes where star-forming material is either heated or physically removed. I read that as a direct, observable example of feedback, where a single central engine regulates the growth of an entire stellar population.
The VLA radio data revealed that a pair of plasma jets, launched by the black hole, twist into a helical, S-shaped pattern that spans the galaxy, and that the jet’s direction slowly wobbles over time, according to The VLA analysis. In follow up reporting, astronomers describe a Jet with Enough Power to Halt Star Formation by stripping star-forming gas from its host, offering new insight into how galaxies evolve and how such rare, powerful jets can quench growth, as detailed in the Jet description. Taken together, those details show that the S-shaped structure is not just a visual flourish, it is the footprint of a process that can shut down stellar birth across an entire galaxy.
Why this jet looks so different from the usual suspects
Most black hole jets that astronomers have cataloged are relatively straight, at least on the scales we can resolve, which is why this object stands out so sharply. In many active galaxies, the outflows punch out of the central regions and then continue in nearly collimated beams for hundreds of thousands of light-years, only bending when they slam into surrounding gas or the intergalactic medium. Here, by contrast, the curvature is intrinsic, baked into the launch geometry itself rather than imposed from outside. Instead of just pointing in one direction, like most black hole jets, this one is sweeping in a curvy S-shaped pathway that has puzzled experts and prompted deeper follow up, as highlighted in the Instead of coverage.
Although most jets are straight or collimated, others have curved shapes, and different mechanisms can produce the non-straight jets that have been seen in young stellar objects and compact binaries, as detailed in high resolution studies of wiggling stellar jets like MHO 1502 and MHO 2147, where Although and Different physical processes are invoked to explain the observed wiggles, according to wiggling jets research. I see the new S-shaped black hole jet as part of that broader family of misaligned and precessing outflows, but operating on a far larger canvas, with the added consequence that its motion is now a driver of galaxy-scale evolution rather than just a curiosity in a single star-forming region.
Clues from other oddly shaped galaxies and collisions
To understand why this particular galaxy might host such a dramatic, wobbling jet, it helps to look at other systems where gravity has twisted disks and disturbed symmetry. NGC 2276, a spiral galaxy located 67 million light years away in the constellation Cancer, looks fairly typical at first glance, but a closer look reveals an asymmetrical structure and the fact that there is practically no star formation in the central part of the galaxy, which is now concentrated in the bluish regions in the galaxy’s spiral arms, a pattern that has been linked to tidal interactions and intense star formation in the outer disk, as shown in NGC 2276 imagery. I read that as a reminder that when galaxies are tugged and torqued by neighbors, their internal gas flows and central engines can be dramatically reoriented.
Another instructive case is the Sombrero Galaxy, M104, whose iconic shape is likely the result of a past galactic collision or an intense gravitational encounter, leaving behind a bright central bulge and a thick, dark dust lane that together resemble a cosmic hat. In that system, a supermassive black hole sits at the core, and the overall structure has been described as a frozen moment of violence sculpted in starlight, a phrase that captures how a single disruptive event can leave a long lasting imprint on morphology, as highlighted in Sombrero commentary. When I put those examples alongside the new S-shaped jet, it seems plausible that a past merger or gravitational encounter tilted the central disk in the wobbling system too, setting up the misalignment that now drives its graceful, galaxy-wide twist.
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