For the first time ever, a team of international astronomers and scientists were surprised to discover how a supermassive black hole is apparently running away from the center of its home galaxy. Black holes attract stars, galaxies, space rocks, cosmic gases and dust and everything else in its path however, this is a very unusual case.
In this new study, astronomers say that this supermassive black hole is speeding away due to gravitational waves. According to lead author of the study, Marco Chiaberge from the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University, this supermassive black hole is moving at 2,000 kilometers per second, flying out of the center of this galaxy.
Chiaberge explains, in order for this black hole to get ejected, a massive amout of energy is needed to do so since this black hole is also colossal in size. Thanks the Hubble Space Telescope, it is estimated that the size of this black hole is around 1 billion solar masses, making this the largest black hole to be kicked out of its galactic system.
New images captured by Hubble reveal a very bright quasar known as 3C186 which suggest that the black hole is already travelled a siginifcant distance from the core of this galaxy. Apaprently, this black hole released an energy equal to 100 million exploding supernovas just to continuously boost and kick out of this galaxy.
Chiaberge suggests, gravitational waves are emitted during this galactic merger when two black holes collide. When the two black holes combine into one, this merged black hole recoils and gets kicked out creating "ripples" in space due to these gravitational waves.
This runaway black hole is currently speeding away from the center of its galaxy at more than 7 million kilometers per hour. Astronomers estimate that this black hole is speeding away so fast that it can reach the moon from Earth in just three minutes, where this quasar is around 8 billion light years away from Earth.
This also means this supermassive black hole can fully escape its galaxy in 20 million years. This new study is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.