A black hole that a galaxy flung out
A student astronomer has claimed to have pinpointed one of the most dramatic phenomenons of the universe — a “super-massive” black hole that has been flung out of a distant galaxy at high speed.
The giant black hole, scientists believe, is more than a billion times the mass of the sun and flying at a speed of 670,000 miles per hour through space. The discovery was made by Marianne Heida, a student at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, while working with experts at the Dutch space research institute SRON as part of a final-year project.
While cataloguing thousands of sources of X-rays in space, she noticed a bright spot which appeared to be radically out of place — on the edge of a galaxy rather than the centre.
The object, more than half a billion light years away, was so intense such that scientists believe it is likely to be a black hole, the Telegraph reported. Every galaxy, including our Milky Way, is thought to contain a super-massive black hole, the largest type of black holes which are formed when two smaller black holes crashes and merge.
The new black hole is then sent shooting away at high speed. The material that falls into black holes heats up dramatically on its final journey and often means that black holes are strong X-ray sources. This enables astronomers to pick them out by looking for X-rays.
“If this is confirmed it is a hugely exciting discovery,” said Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society. “Just imagine the kind of event that could throw perhaps a thousand million suns of matter out of a galaxy.” Her project, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is thought to be the first time that the phenomenon has been captured.
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