Scientists SOLVE mystery of ‘runaway supermassive black hole’ barrelling through the universe

Billed as an ‘invisible monster on the loose’, it caused quite a stir in the scientific community when it was unveiled last month.

But what was initially thought to be the first-ever look at a “runaway” supermassive black hole hurtling through the universe is now disputed.

A new study claims to have “solved” the mystery by suggesting that a trail of stars seen by the Hubble Space Telescope is actually a relatively common type of galaxy known as a flat or sparse galaxy.

This challenges the theory that the stars are the aftermath of a massive black hole plowing in gas in front of them and causing star formation.

Researchers at Yale University had proposed that the runaway object 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 scientists.

They said the one spotted was 7.5 billion light-years away and was traveling so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could make the 237,674-mile journey from Earth to the moon in just 14 minutes.

And while you might imagine that such a cosmic monster would gobble up stars and matter ahead of it, Yale researchers claimed it actually left a trail of stars behind it.

These stars, analysis showed, weighed a whopping 20 million stars and spanned 200,000 light-years — twice the diameter of the Milky Way.

However, while runaway black holes are thought to exist, it takes a host of complex exceptional circumstances for them to occur.

For this reason, scientists around the world began to explore alternative, simpler theories that could explain what Hubble discovered.

This led to the conclusion of Rresearchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in the Canary Islands that this unusual structure of stars may in fact be a galaxy without a side bulge.

These are known as sparse or flat galaxies and are widespread throughout the cosmos.

They have a thin, rotating disk of gas, dust, and stars at the center and come in two main types: spiral and lenticular.

“The motions, size and number of stars are consistent with what has been observed in galaxies in the local universe,” says lead author Jorge Sanchez Almeida.

Alternative theory: Researchers at Yale University had proposed that the runaway object escaped after two galaxies merged about 50 million years ago, bringing the supermassive black holes together at their centers (artist’s impression)

‘It is a relief that we have found the solution to this mystery; the new proposed scenario is much simpler.

“In a way it’s also a pity, because the existence of fleeing black holes is expected, and this could have been observed first.”

The researchers came to their conclusion by comparing the trail of stars and their very narrow structure with that of a well-known local galaxy without a bulge, called IC5249.

This extremely thin galaxy, which has a similar mass of stars to what was detected by Hubble, was also found to match the observation in a number of ways.

“When we analyzed the velocities of this distant structure of stars, we realized that they were very similar to those obtained by the rotation of galaxies, so we decided to compare a much closer galaxy and found that they are extremely similar,” the study said. . co-author Mireia Montes.

The stars, analysis showed, weighed a whopping 20 million stars and spanned 200,000 light-years — twice the diameter of the Milky Way. This is Hubble’s observation

Fellow researcher Ignacio Trujillo added: ‘We also looked at the relationship between the mass of the supposed galaxy and its maximum rotational speed, and found that it is indeed a galaxy that behaves like a galaxy.

“It’s an interesting object because it’s quite a large galaxy at a very great distance from Earth, where most of the galaxies are smaller.”

Despite the new theory, the Yale researchers still hope to use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study the structure further and confirm their own hypothesis.

But for now, it seems that this cosmic mystery has a much simpler – if less exciting – explanation.

The new study is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.