It was once thought that the supermassive black hole at a galaxy's center spins in the same direction as the galaxy itself — like a whirlpool in a sink. But measurements using polarized light analysis (a method that turns dust reflection into a spin arrow) showed the opposite. Out of 54 galaxies with active nuclei, 27 black holes spin clockwise, 27 counterclockwise. Among those where comparison with the galaxy was possible, 11 matched and 13 did not.

The picture is like a children's carousel with a spinning top in the center: the whole carousel rotates, but the top lives by its own rules — you can spin it in any direction. So it is with a black hole: its axis is set by the last major gas infall or collision with another hole, not by the multi-billion-year legacy of the parent galaxy.

This means that the hole grows its mass chaotically, contrary to old models of orderly feeding from a rotating galactic disk. An astonishing conclusion: many supermassive holes are probably not 'native inhabitants' of their galaxies, but interlopers captured in mergers. That's why narrow jets of radiation (radio jets) often shoot at an angle to the galactic pancake's plane — the hole is simply looking the other way. Now, to more accurately reproduce the growth of structures in the Universe, computer simulations must account for this cosmic messiness.