A ‘runaway’ black hole is spotted ripping through the universe – as NASA warns there’s an ‘invisible monster on the loose’
- According to NASA, a supermassive black hole is hurtling through the universe
- Weighing in at a staggering 20 million suns, it has left a trail of stars in its wake
NASA has warned that there is an “invisible monster on the loose,” in the form of a “runaway” black hole.
The supermassive black hole is hurtling through the universe so fast that if it were located in our solar system, it could complete the 237,674-mile journey from Earth to the moon in just 14 minutes.
Weighing in at a whopping 20 million suns, the black hole has left a trail of stars in its wake, spanning a staggering 200,000 light-years — twice the diameter of the Milky Way.
“We think we see a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and can form stars,” says Professor Pieter van Dokkum, lead author of the study from Yale University.
“So we’re looking at star formation behind the black hole.”
NASA has warned there is an ‘invisible monster on the loose’, in the form of a ‘runaway’ black hole (artist’s impression)
While you might imagine a black hole swallowing up stars, analysis with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showed that’s not the case.
Instead, the black hole plows into gas in front of it, triggering star formation.
‘What we see is the aftermath,’ explains Prof. Van Dokkum. “Like the wake behind a ship, we see the wake behind the black hole.”
Hubble’s images show the black hole at one end of a column extending back to its parent galaxy.
The outer tip of this column contains a “remarkably bright knot of ionized oxygen,” which the researcher believes is likely the result of the heat from the black hole’s motion.
“Gas in front of it gets a shock because of this supersonic, very high velocity impact of the black hole moving through the gas,” said Professor van Dokkum.
‘How exactly it works is not really known.’
Professor van Dokkum stumbled upon the black hole while scanning Hubble images for globular clusters in a nearby galaxy.
“I was just scanning through the Hubble image and then I noticed we have a little streak,” he explained.
“I immediately thought, ‘oh, a cosmic ray hitting the camera detector and causing a linear image artifact.’
A supermassive black hole lies at the tip of the bridge in the lower left. The black hole was ejected from the upper right of the galaxy. It compressed gas in its wake, leaving a long trail of young blue stars
“When we eliminated cosmic rays, we realized it was still there. It didn’t look like anything we’ve seen before.”
The researchers believe the runaway black hole escaped after two galaxies merged about 50 million years ago, bringing the supermassive black holes together at their centers.
When a third galaxy came along with its own black hole, the three mixed, leading to a “chaotic and unstable configuration.”
One of the black holes probably stole the momentum of the other two and ejected it from its host galaxy.
As the runaway black hole took off in one direction, the two remaining black holes shot in the other direction, according to the researchers.
The team now hopes to use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study the black hole further and confirm this statement.