This black hole has proved extraordinarily strange: the object shocked observers with an abrupt outburst of radiation so intense that it apparently obliterated the black hole's corona, an enveloping cloud of whirling, billion-degree plasma, for three months in 2018.
Such a dizzying assortment of dynamic activity is unprecedented around a supermassive black hole and can't be readily explained by any typical tidal disruption event.
Eileen Meyer, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, recalls her initial impression of 1ES 1927+654 as that of a very boring, faint radio blob. But... she realized this [black hole] was weird, very weird.
Many research groups began closely monitoring the system, watching across the next few years as the corona reassembled itself and quiescent conditions returned, until the black hole unleashed more surprises.
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