Astronomers marvel at a supermassive black hole moving strangely in deep space

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At the heart of galaxy J0437 + 2456 lies a black hole, astronomers believe they have found a restless black hole.

Sloan Digital Sky Survey

A supermassive black hole, about 3 million times the mass of the sun, is on the run. Located about 230 million light years from Earth, the black hole has disturbed and is now moving at about 110,000 miles per hour, but astronomers aren’t sure why.

In a new study, published Friday in the Astrophysical Journal, a team of astronomers observed supermassive black holes in the hearts of galaxies, looking for signs that they may be moving unusually. In space, everything moves in all directions due to the push and pull of gravity, but most black holes move in the same direction at the same speed as their host galaxy.

“We don’t expect the majority of supermassive black holes to move; they’re usually content to just stay put,” Dominic Pesce, an astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead author of the study, told Harvard. Gazette.

Not so for the galaxy J0437 + 2456 and its SMBH. It’s not just hanging out.

In 2018, Pesce and colleagues noticed that the supermassive black hole in the center of J0437 + 2456 was acting perhaps a little odd. Continue their original observations of the galaxy with the now-defunct Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and Chile, they now describe the rare and funky movement of the Milky Way’s giant black hole.

To study the movement of black holes – invisible cosmic beasts – the team had to focus on the area around the holes. Surrounding the SMBH at the center of a galaxy is an “accretion disk” of debris and dusty material that is slowly being swallowed up. It is a great source of light and radio waves. The team looked at SMBHs containing water in their discs and looked for a telltale signal shedding the circling water – the extremely sci-fi sounding phenomenon known as a “maser.” This emission can be used to measure the speed of a black hole.

Of the 10 black holes they studied, only the one in the center of J0437 + 2456 was unusual. It did not move at the same speed as its home galaxy.

But how did it come to be so disturbed? The team isn’t sure, but they offer some options.

The focus of their studies has been the use of masers to identify pairs of SMBHs or black holes that have recently merged. In the fusion scenario, the new black hole may “flinch”, which could explain why its speed differs from its own galaxy. If it’s a pair of black holes – a binary system – then the violent push and pull of gravity can disrupt its speed.

It is also possible that it is an SMBH from an external galaxy that recently collided with J0437 + 2456.

For now it remains a mystery.

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