Giant black hole lost in the galaxy

A black hole with a mass about 100,000 times greater than the Sun has been ejected from its location and is moving through the galaxy.

A giant black hole is ejected from its position as it moves through the galaxy. Image: Chandra X-ray Observatory.

A research team led by physicist Dacheng Lin of the University of New Hampshire, USA, discovered a black hole that was ejected from its position and was moving in its galaxy, IFL Science reported on October 6.

From 2000 to 2015, scientists used the European Space Agency's (ESA) XMM-Newton space observatory and NASA's Chandra space telescope to observe a special region of the galaxy GJ1417+52, 4.5 billion light-years from Earth.

They discovered a super-bright X-ray source pointing toward the edge of the galaxy. It had all the hallmarks of a supermassive black hole, but it wasn’t at the center of the galaxy. The team speculated that it could be a rare case of a black hole going astray.

The object, dubbed XJ1417+52, has a mass about 100,000 times greater than the Sun. The team believes the black hole was ejected when its galaxy merged or collided with another. When the collision occurred, the sun from one galaxy approached the giant black hole of the other, causing the black hole to be ejected from its position and the sun to shatter.

This new discovery helps strengthen the hypothesis that in extreme cases, such as a collision with a larger galaxy, a black hole can be ejected from its central position.

According to VNE