M87

Imagine a bar magnet with a north and south pole. Now imagine that magnet suddenly flipping so north becomes south and vice versa. That's essentially what happened with the magnetic field around the giant black hole at the center of galaxy M87 — except this black hole is 6.5 billion times heavier than our Sun. Scientists noticed this flip by watching the powerful beam of energy, called a jet, that shoots out from the black hole. The direction and behavior of that beam changed in a way that revealed the magnetic field had reversed. It's a big deal because those magnetic fields are thought to act like the engine that powers and steers these cosmic jets, and we've rarely caught one flipping in action.