Super black holes (SMBHs) are a class of black holes with masses millions of times that of the Sun, and are usually “flat” at the center of galaxies, where they are stationary relative to them. One such black hole has been found to be moving at 110,000 miles per hour, according to a study.
The study, published March 12 in The Astrophysical Journal, found that the super black hole at the center of galaxy J0437+2456, 230 million light-years from Earth, has an unusual pattern of motion.
Everything in the universe is in some kind of motion, and scientists assume that these super black holes, located at the center of every galaxy, simply move with the galaxy, meaning they are stationary relative to the galaxy they are in. But this super black hole, with a mass about 3 million times that of the Sun, is something special.
Dominic Pesce, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead author of the study, said, “We think that most super black holes are stationary, and they generally just stay in in one place. They’re so massive that it’s hard to get them to move. It’s like kicking a bowling ball or a soccer ball, and the object we’re comparing to a ‘bowling ball’ here is millions of times the mass of the Sun, and that requires a very strong kick.”
Black holes are invisible and elusive, and the group is probing their motion through accretion disks around them. An accretion disk is a ring of dusty material surrounding a black hole that is constantly being absorbed by the hole, a process that emits some light and radio waves. In particular, the researchers inferred the rate of motion of the black hole from the signal emitted by the moisture in the accretion disk.
They investigated a total of 10 super black holes, and only the black hole at the center of galaxy J0437+2456 has an unusual rate – one that is inconsistent with the rate of movement of its host galaxy.
Why does this black hole show a particular pattern of motion? Researchers have suggested at least two possibilities.
One possibility is that the black hole just merged with another black hole, and the violent impact left a “recoil” that caused the black hole’s motion; another is that the black hole is surrounded by another black hole, and the two black holes are a binary system, and the push and pull gravity between the two objects causes the black hole’s unusual motion.
Exactly why this is, the research team admits that it is a mystery now.
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