Scientists have discovered a "misaligned" black hole just 8,000 light years from Earth - and it's behaving in a way that has never been seen before. Researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) published their findings about the V404 Cygni black hole in the journal Nature. They have never seen a black hole behaving in such a strange way before - with its spewing radio jets rotating with high-speed clouds of plasma that are erupting out of it in different directions. Image: An artist's impression of V404 Cygni seen close up. Pic: ICRAR The study's lead author, Associate Professor James Miller-Jones, said: "This is one of the most extraordinary black hole systems I've ever come across. "Like many black holes, it's feeding on a nearby star, pulling gas away from the star and forming a disk of material that encircles the black hole and spirals towards it under gravity. Advertisement "What's different in V404 Cygni is that we think the disk of material and the black hole are misaligned." This misalignment means that the inner part of the black hole's disk is wobbling like a spinning top, causing the jets to be fired out in different directions as it changes orientation. The black hole in V404 Cygni was first discovered in 1989 after a huge outburst of jets and radiation. According to Associate Professor Miller-Jones, another very bright outburst in 2015, lasting for two weeks, prompted telescopes around the world to tune in and study what was going on. "Everybody jumped on the outburst with whatever telescopes they could throw at it, so we have this amazing observational coverage," he said. When the ICRAR team studied the black hole they realised the jets were behaving in a way which had never been seen before. Normally, jets shoot straight out from the poles of black holes, but these jets have been spotted shooting in different directions at different times - and they were changing direction rapidly, every couple of hours. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player The first ever image of a black hole Associate Professor Miller-Jones said this change was because of the accretion disk, the disk of matter around the edge of the black hole that was falling into it. "The inner part of the accretion disk was precessing and effectively pulling the jets around with it," Associate Professor Miller-Jones said. "You can think of it like the wobble of a spinning top as it slows down -only in this case, the wobble is caused by Einstein's theory of general relativity." Image: An artist's impression of twisted space-time around the spinning black hole. Pic: ICRAR Co-author Dr Alex Tetarenko said the speed the jets were changing direction meant the scientists had to use a very different approach to most radio observations. "Typically, radio telescopes produce a single image from several hours of observation," she said. "But these jets were changing so fast that in a four-hour image we just saw a blur. "It was like trying to take a picture of a waterfall with a one-second shutter speed." Instead, the researchers produced 103 individual images, each about 70 seconds long, and joined them together into a movie. "It was only by doing this that we were able to see these changes over a very short time period," Dr Tetarenko said. Another co-author, Dr Gemma Anderson, said: "Anytime you get a misalignment between the spin of a black hole and the material falling in, you would expect to see this when a black hole starts feeding very rapidly. "That could include a whole bunch of other bright, explosive events in the Universe, such as supermassive black holes feeding very quickly or tidal disruption events, when a black hole shreds a star."<doc-sep>A black hole nearly 8,000 light-years from Earth has been behaving strangely and astronomers are fascinated. Though it was discovered in 1989, the V404 Cygni black hole first garnered global attention in 2015 when it brightened telescopes for two weeks as it consumed material from an orbiting star. Not all of the matter was was consumed though, some of it, superheated by the gravitational force of the black hole, was shot far into space in bright jets of plasma. While such outbursts are not out of the norm for black holes, usually they tend to emit from poles and go in the same direction. However, a closer look at these jets revealed that instead they appeared to be firing in a wobbling pattern known as procession. On Monday, in the journal Nature, James Miller-Jones, and his team of researchers from the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia, published their observations on the 2015 event and offered an explanation for V404 Cygni's odd behaviour. The black hole is misaligned. “We were gobsmacked by what we saw in this system — it was completely unexpected,” said the University of Alberta's Gregory Sivakoff in a statement from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The black hole itself is surrounded by a six-million-mile-wide disk of spinning matter known as an accretion disk. Generally, it is expected that the disk spins on the same axis as the black hole itself, but the strange pattern of the jets show that in V404 Cygni's case it is not. NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Show all 21 1 /21 NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Robert McCall’s mid-1970s prediction of NASA’s space shuttle building a modular space station is close to what finally happened, except that the real shuttles only flew one at a time. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Ed White photographed by Gemini 4 Commander Jim McDivitt. During the first of 66 orbits, they made an unsuccessful attempt to rendezvous with the spent upper stage of their Titan launch vehicle. On McDivitt’s advice, White waited one more orbit to recover from the effort of the failed rendezvous, and then exited the Gemini for his historic spacewalk on June 3, 1965. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Apollo 9 CM pilot Dave Scott emerges from the hatch, testing some of the spacesuit systems that will be used for lunar operations. The photo was taken from the hatch of the docked LM by Rusty Schweickart in March 1969. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Mothership “Balls Three” overflies an X-15 in 1961. Three operational X-15s were constructed and flown for 199 test flights between them, as they pushed at the “envelopes” of speed and altitude, and reached the very edges of space. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives The Mercury Control Center (MCC) at Cape Canaveral supervised seven human spaceflights between May 1961 and March 1965, into the beginning of the Gemini era. Meanwhile the more advanced control complex in Houston was taking shape ahead of Apollo. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Technicians working at the base of Alan Shepard’s Mercury-Redstone 3 launch vehicle are swathed in vapour from vented excess oxidiser gas on May 5, 1961. Subsequent rockets could not be so closely approached when fueling. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives The Rendezvous Docking Simulator at Langley prepared Gemini astronauts for the strange physics of orbital flight. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Ahead of Gemini 10, Commander John Young explains to the media how copilot Michael Collins will inspect the Agena Target Docking Vehicle during his spacewalk, 1966. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Navy divers prepare to retrieve the Gemini 6A crew on December 16, 1965. Green dye was released by spacecraft on splashdown, making it easier to spot from the air. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives The U.S. geological Survey’s map of the area around Tycho Crater, famous as the site of a mysterious alien monolith in the 1968 science fiction film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In real life, this chaotic and rugged terrain would have been too difficult for an Apollo mission to access. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot Michael Collins inspects NASA’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, where rock samples collected by Apollo were analysed. Nitrogen gas protected the rocks from accidental corrosion in Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives NASA scientists are confident that Buzz Aldrin’s boot prints from Apollo 11 are still as sharp and distinct today as when they were first stamped down in 1969, because the Moon has no air or rain to erode them. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives NASA’s Anechoic Chambers are among the quietest places anywhere on earth. Walls absorb almost all stray echoes, whether sound or radio. This 1972 model of a shuttle, being tested for radio characteristics, has thruster pods on the wingtips. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Lightning strikes the launchpad of Space Shuttle Challenger on August 30, 1983 prior to STS-8, the first pre-dawn launch of the space shuttle program. Launchpads are surrounded by tall lightning towers and other conductive systems.These create a giant “Faraday Cage,” diverting the electric charge of strike well away from the spacecraft. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000. Its habitable volume is equivalent to a Boeing 747’s. An international crew of six people live and work while traveling at five miles (8 km) per second, orbiting Earth once every 90 minutes. This is the single most complex and ambitious engineering effort in history, even when compared to Apollo. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives The Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) is a hybrid of parachute and balloon technology. A new generation of flexible heat shield materials could enable a huge shield to be deployed from a small storage canister just before a spaceraft hits the atmosphere of its target planet. In July 2012 a HIAD survived a trip through Earth’s atmosphere at 7,600 mph. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives In April 2016, ocean scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, analysing data from Landsat 8, found mysterious lines crisscrossing the vegetation in the shallow waters of the North Caspian Sea.The cause turned out to be ice gouging at the seafloor in winter, before melting in the spring, and leaving just these clues. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Curiosity made this self-portrait on August 5, 2015, by maneuvering the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the end of a seven-foot-long robotic arm. Multiple overlapping frames were acquired, then digitally stitched together by image analysts at JPL. The arm moved into a new position for each frame but the camera always pointed toward a specific “vanishing point” to minimize parallax distortions. Courtesy of NASA NASA at 60: Amazing photos of space exploration released from archives Jupiter's moon Io is dwarfed by the planet it orbits, as seen by the Cassini spacecraft en route to Saturn. Cassini’s 13-year tour of the ringed planet changed the course of planetary exploration.<doc-sep>Astronomers have noticed a black hole, known as V404 Cygni, 8,000 light years away that is pulling space into itself, according to a new study published by Nature and reported by CNN Loading The black hole is nine times larger than the sun and its jets of plasma clouds – which are normal to come out of the poles from black holes – are shooting out in various directions at completely different rates, which is uncommon. "This is one of the most extraordinary black hole systems I've ever come across," lead author of the study and associate professor from the Curtin University's International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, James Miller-Jones said in a statement. "Like many black holes, it's feeding on a nearby star, pulling gas away from the star and forming a disk of material that encircles the black hole and spirals towards it under gravity," he continued. "What's different in V404 Cygni is that we think the disk of material and the black hole are misaligned. This appears to be causing the inner part of the disk to wobble like a spinning top and fire jets out in different directions as it changes orientation." Loading ‘Nine times the size of the sun’. Before you start your daily routine inside this little game we play, really try to process that bit of information. There are beautiful mysteries full of power and impermanence happening all the time, all around us. It’s overwhelmingly liberating https://t.co/RQRyGHJbWB — Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) May 1, 2019 The black hole's gravitational pull is so intense that overall its pulling space and time right into itself, which is known as frame-dragging. "This is the only mechanism we can think of that can explain the rapid precession we see in V404 Cygni," Miller-Jones said. "You can think of it like the wobble of a spinning top as it slows down, only in this case, the wobble is caused by Einstein's general theory of relativity." Avengers: Endgame's Chris Evans posted the news of the black hole study on Twitter, where he shared his amazement for the vastness of the universe. A recent discovery last December had shed new light on our knowledge of black holes when an astronomer saw wind gusts blowing from a supermassive black hole 228,000 light years away from its surrounding galaxy.For more Space news, check out the gamma-ray constellations that NASA named after Marvel's Avengers, the TARDIS from Doctor Who, and more. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.Jessie Wade is a news writer at IGN and is fascinated by the universe. Chat with her on Twitter about astronomy @jessieannwade<doc-sep>
A mural of George Floyd is shown in the intersection of 38th St & Chicago Ave on March 31, 2021 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Community members continue preparations during the third day in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged with multiple counts of murder in the death of George Floyd. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 01: President Donald Trump's lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani talks to journalists outside the White House West Wing July 01, 2020 in Washington, DC. Giuliani did an on-camera interview with One America News Network's Chanel Rion before talking to other journalists about Vice President Joe Biden and the news that Russian intelligence may have paid Taliban operatives to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) ORLANDO, FLORIDA - FEBRUARY 28: Former President Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference held in the Hyatt Regency on February 28, 2021 in Orlando, Florida. Begun in 1974, CPAC brings together conservative organizations, activists, and world leaders to discuss issues important to them. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Here's what reported grand jury in Trump case may look like NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 09: People walk past the Trump Tower as the impeachment trial of Donald Trump begins in Washington on February 09, 2021 in New York City. After listening to nearly four hours of legal arguments, the Senate has voted on Tuesday to move ahead with the impeachment trial of former President Trump. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Report: US companies may have benefited from forced labor of Uyghurs WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 20: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the conflict in the Middle East from Cross- Hall of the White House on May 20, 2021 in Washington, DC. Israel and Hamas announced that they would agree to a cease-fire, which will take into effect on Friday, following days of fighting that claimed more than 200 lives. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) SAN JOSE, CA - MAY 26: A view of the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) light-rail yard where a mass shooting occurred on May 26, 2021 in San Jose, California. A VTA employee opened fire at the yard, with preliminary reports indicating nine people dead including the gunman. (Photo by Philip Pacheco/Getty Images) A healthcare worker prepares to administer a Pfizer/BioNTEch coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine at The Michener Institute, in Toronto, Ontario on December 14, 2020. - Ontario, Canada's most populous province and one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, had 1,940 new cases and 23 deaths on Monday. The province is expected to give its next doses to nursing home workers as a priority, according to media reports. (Photo by CARLOS OSORIO / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CARLOS OSORIO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) 'Never seen levels like this': Union president on airline passenger misconduct Memorial Day weekend will bring rain and cool air for much of the East (CNN) — Nearly 8,000 light-years away from Earth, astronomers have discovered a black hole that keeps rapidly swinging out jets of plasma clouds into space, according to a new study. The black hole, known as V404 Cygni, doesn’t behave like others. The jets shoot out possibly within minutes of each other and in all different directions. And while the researchers admit that black holes are some of the most extreme objects in the universe, this one is different. “This is one of the most extraordinary black hole systems I’ve ever come across,” study author James Miller-Jones said in a statement. Miller-Jones is also an associate professor at Curtin University’s International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. The study published Monday in the journal Nature. “Like many black holes, it’s feeding on a nearby star, pulling gas away from the star and forming a disk of material that encircles the black hole and spirals towards it under gravity,” he said. “What’s different in V404 Cygni is that we think the disk of material and the black hole are misaligned. This appears to be causing the inner part of the disk to wobble like a spinning top and fire jets out in different directions as it changes orientation.” The black hole was first discovered in 1989 because it released jets and radiation. Previous outbursts associated with this black hole were noted in 1938 and 1956 and found on archival photographic plates.