Huge gravitational wave burst displaces black hole
10 Apr 2017 by Evoluted New Media
Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole that appears to have been propelled from the centre of a distant galaxy by the force of gravitational waves.
Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole that appears to have been propelled from the centre of a distant galaxy by the force of gravitational waves.
The black hole, with a mass one billion times larger than the Sun’s, was detected using the Hubble Space Telescope. This is believed to be the first time astronomers have found a black hole so far away from its galactic host’s centre.
Professor Stefano Bianchi from the Roma Tre University in Italy and co-author said: “We estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovae exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole.”
Galaxy 3C186 is located eight billion light years from Earth, with estimates placing the black hole at 35,000 light years from the centre and travelling at 7.5 million km per hour. At this speed it could travel from Earth to the Moon in three minutes.
The international team of researchers have theorised that 1-2bn years ago, two galaxies – each with a central black hole – coalesced. As the black holes merged, discrepancies in mass and rotation meant gravitational waves were created more strongly in one direction than another, resulting in the black hole moving away from the centre of the galaxy.
Galaxy 3C186’s peculiar features were discovered as astronomers used the Hubble telescope to survey powerful blasts of radiation emitted from merging galaxies. Dr Marco Chiaberge, from the John Hopkins University in Baltimore and team leader, said: “When I first saw this, I thought we were seeing something very peculiar. When we combined observations from Hubble, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, it all pointed towards the same scenario. The amount of data we collected, from X-rays to ultraviolet to near-infrared light, is definitely larger than for any of the other candidate rogue black holes.”
The astronomers are aiming to use Hubble again in combination with other telescopes to further measure the speed of the black hole and its gas disk, which can provide more information about this oddity. The study was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
