James Webb Space Telescope Confirms 1st 'Runaway' Supermassive Black Hole

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second). That not only makes this the first confirmed runaway supermassive black hole, but this object is also one of the fastest-moving bodies ever detected, rocketing through its home, a pair of galaxies named the 'Cosmic Owl,' at 3,000 times the speed of sound at sea level here on Earth. If that isn't astounding enough, the black hole is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized 'bow-shock' of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it, within which gas is accumulating and triggering star formation. 'It boggles the mind!' discovery team leader Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University told Space.com. 'The forces that are needed to dislodge such a massive black hole from its home are enormous. And yet, it was predicted that such escapes should occur!'

'This is the only black hole that has been found far away from its former home,' van Dokkum said. 'That made it the best candidate [for a] runaway supermassive black hole, but what was missing was confirmation. All we really had was a streak that was difficult to explain in any other way. With the JWST, we have now confirmed that there is indeed a black hole at the tip of the streak, and that it is speeding away from its former host.'

The research is currently available as a pre-peer-reviewed paper on arXiv.

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