Scientists find a black hole moving at 110,000 mph throughout its galaxy
One possibility is that it is interacting with another black hole that seems hidden in the galaxy 230 million light-years away, as it lacks certain properties to become visible.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFA supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun is seen in an undated NASA artist's concept illustration.(photo credit: REUTERS/NASA/JPL-CALTECH/HANDOUT)
Researchers at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a supermassive black hole that appears to be in motion, according to a recent study.“Supermassive” black holes, have a mass greater than a million suns combined. This one is purported to be three million times the mass of the sun.“We don’t expect the majority of supermassive black holes to be moving; they’re usually content to just sit around,” said lead author of the study astronomer Dominic Pesce, according to Harvard. “They’re just so heavy that it’s tough to get them going."Consider how much more difficult it is to kick a bowling ball into motion than it is to kick a soccer ball – realizing that in this case, the ‘bowling ball’ is several million times the mass of our Sun," he said. "That’s going to require a pretty mighty kick."The Harvard report noted that the team of researchers has been focusing on observing this rare phenomenon for the past five years.They're hypothesis is that if the black hole and the galaxy do not share the same velocity, then the black hole had been "disturbed" in some manner.The team peered across ten far away galaxies to study the supermassive black holes that were hiding within their cores.The team found that nine out of the ten supermassive black holes appeared to be at rest, while one appeared to be in motion, moving about in its galaxy.Harvard said that the black hole is 230 million light years away from Earth in a galaxy called J0437+2456.Pesce and his team have clocked the black hole moving at a speed of 110,000 miles per hour within the galaxy. The reason for the movement is unknown.“We may be observing the aftermath of two supermassive black holes merging,” radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Jim Condon, and co-author of the study, told Harvard. “The result of such a merger can cause the newborn black hole to recoil, and we may be watching it in the act of recoiling or as it settles down again.”The scientists believe one possibility is that the black hole is interacting with another black hole that seems hidden as it lacks certain properties to become visible.“Despite every expectation that they really ought to be out there in some abundance, scientists have had a hard time identifying clear examples of binary supermassive black holes,” Pesce told Harvard. “What we could be seeing in the galaxy J0437+2456 is one of the black holes in such a pair, with the other remaining hidden to our radio observations because of its lack of maser emission.” The group of researchers published its findings in The Astrophysics Journal.
