The scientific community has recently uncovered the existence of a moving supermassive black hole, identified as the first of its kind. With a mass approximately three million times greater than our Sun, this black hole is situated in the galaxy J0437+2456, a staggering 228 million light years away from Earth.
Scientific Research Behind the Discovery
A team of scientists embarked on the study of 10 distant galaxies, each possessing a supermassive black hole at their core. The presumption was that these black holes would have an identical velocity to their residing galaxies.
The focus of this exploration centered on the water inside the accretion disk, defined as the spiraling mass around a supermassive black hole composed of matter destined to be eventually consumed by the black hole. As the water navigates around the black hole, akin to liquid circulating in a sink before being drained, it yields a maser — a laser-like beam of radio light. These masers offer precise measurements of a black hole’s velocity.
Unveiling the Moving Supermassive Black Hole
Among the ten black holes investigated, only the one located in the center of J0437+2456 appeared peculiar. Contrary to expectations, this black hole was not moving at the same rate as its host galaxy.
Previously, due to the sheer enormity of black holes, they were conceived as stationary entities lodged within galaxies rather than celestial bodies capable of movement in space. This particular black hole, however, is translocating with a velocity of approximately 110,000 miles per hour within its galaxy.
Possible Causes for the Black Hole’s Movement
The motion of this black hole could potentially be attributed to a couple of scenarios.
One possibility is the merging of two supermassive black holes. Post-merger, the resulting black hole might have been observed moving backward before eventually stabilizing in a set position.
Another theory is that of a binary system of black holes. Here, two supermassive black holes might cohabit within the host galaxy, bound together by a common center of gravity. These twin black holes may be engaged in an orbital rotation. The sibling of this newfound wandering black hole might be undetectable by the radio antenna network owing to its lack of maser emissions.
Understanding Black Holes
A black hole denotes a location in space where matter is densely compressed, generating a gravitational field strong enough to prevent even light from escaping. Alberto Einstein theorized the concept in 1915, with the term ‘black hole’ introduced by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler in the mid-1960s.
Typically, black holes are classified into two categories. The first category ranges between a few solar masses and tens of solar masses, believed to form upon the death of massive stars. The second category consists of supermassive black holes, which measure hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of the Sun in our Solar System.
In April 2019, The Event Horizon Telescope Project unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole’s shadow. This project is a collective endeavor involving eight radio telescopes located across the globe, designed to detect radio waves from space. When two black holes orbit each other and merge, they create gravitational waves.
