Astronomers have solved a decade-long cosmic puzzle after discovering what appears to be the mythical “Eye of Sauron” lurking in the distant universe. The stunning revelation comes from 15 years of ultra-precise radio telescope observations that have finally explained why a seemingly slow-moving celestial object has been one of the brightest sources of high-energy gamma rays and cosmic neutrinos ever detected.
The breakthrough report, just published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, centers on PKS 1424+240, a blazar located billions of light-years from Earth that had long perplexed scientists. This active galaxy, powered by a supermassive black hole consuming matter at its core, stood out as the brightest known neutrino-emitting blazar identified by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory while simultaneously glowing with very high-energy gamma rays detected by ground-based Cherenkov telescopes.