oversized black hole which runs away from its galaxy at a speed of approx. 4 million miles per hourso fast that it can get from the Earth to the Moon in just 14 minutes, astronomers led by Yale University have discovered.

Analysis of images from space. Hubble telescope NASA researchers have discovered an unusual, very thin, almost straight line of young stars.

After observing with the Keck Observatory’s Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and near-infrared spectrograph, they concluded that they were observing the effects of a flying black hole. The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“We’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else in the universe.”

The black hole left behind one an unprecedented train of newborn stars200,000 light years long.

“We think we see black hole wavewhere the gas cools and is able to form stars. Thus, we see the formation of stars after a black hole, ”says Yale University professor of astronomy and physics and lead author of the study, Peter Van Dokkum.

“What we see is what follows. How wake up behind the ship, we see the outflow behind the black hole,” he adds.

He notes that “We’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else in the universe.”

“We have known for a long time that supermassive black holes exist, and have been predicting for about 50 years that they can sometimes be ejected from galaxies. If confirmed, it will first proof runaway supermassive black hole, confirming this prediction.”

Galactic billiards

One possible explanation for the removal of a black hole from its home galaxy has to do with merger of two galaxies both of them contain a supermassive black hole at their core.

As the black holes orbit each other at the center of the newly merged galaxy, a third supermassive black hole in the other galaxy invades, andinteraction between three it picks up enough speed to torpedo one of the three black holes. Something like one galaxy billiards between three massive black holes.

At a later stage, the researchers aim to make observations with the space telescope. James Webb and the space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm whether their discovery is indeed a runaway black hole.

Source: RES-IPE

⇒ News today

Subscribe to kathimerini.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news

See all the latest news from Greece and the world at kathimerini.gr