NuSTAR has detected unexpectedly fast and intense X-ray variability from a supermassive black hole seen less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

When scientists detected the gamma-ray burst known as GRB 221009A on Oct. 9, 2022, they dubbed it the brightest of all time, or BOAT. Most gamma-ray bursts occur when the core of a star more massive than our Sun collapses, becoming a black hole. These events regularly release as much energy in a few minutes as our Sun will release in its entire lifetime.

Some of the world’s most powerful telescopes simultaneously observed the supermassive black hole in galaxy M87, the first black hole to be directly imaged.

Black holes are famous for being ravenous eaters, but they do not eat everything that falls toward them. A small portion of material gets shot back out in powerful jets of hot gas, called plasma, that can wreak havoc on their surroundings. Along the way, this plasma somehow gets energized enough to strongly radiate light, forming two bright columns along the black hole's axis of rotation. Scientists have long debated where and how this happens in the jet.