James Webb Space Telescope Confirms 1st 'Runaway' Supermassive Black Hole (space.com) 36
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.
"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.
Re: James finds creimer (Score:3)
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Velocity (Score:2)
I do kind of wonder how this thing attained its relative velocity when no other body seems to have the same properties.
Re:Velocity (Score:5, Informative)
Block-hole merger recoil [wikipedia.org].
Re:Velocity (Score:4)
Thank you for that. I wish I had mod points.
Re: (Score:1)
Thank you for that. I wish I had mod points.
Even if you had mod points, you couldn't have modded him up since you had already posted before he replied to you. /s
Re:Velocity (Score:4, Funny)
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Link only shows artists impression (Score:5, Informative)
To see the actual image of the (space around the) black hole, you have to go to the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.04166
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The link only shows an artists impression I could have made myself. To see the actual image of the (space around the) black hole, you have to go to the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.041... [arxiv.org]
To see our machines impression of what a black hole looks like from millions of light years away, based on our understanding and subsequent programming within systems still limited by our capacity to understand from afar.
It's ALL an artist impression. Always has been.
Better units (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
This always amazes me... (Score:3)
We get these reports with phrases such as "rocketing through space".
Um, relativity teaches me that it is relative, whatever it is. So, rocketing through space relative to what, us? And the Solar System is also rocketing through space, relative to what?
I'm guessing there is some reference point the experts have declared to be THE reference... And like that, the experts just make it up, in this case for convenience...
Or not. Comments?
Re: (Score:2)
You are thinking Newtonian physics too much. For one, speed of light isn't relative in the sense you seem to refer to.
Re: (Score:2)
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And that makes sense to me. Relative to things nearby. Fine.
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There is also the Cosmic Microwave Background that you can move relative to. It is probably the closest to a universal reference frame you can get to.
Re: This always amazes me... (Score:2)
That doesn't make as much sense as other concepts, but hey, physics didn't always make sense...
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There is a background radiation that permeates space ("Cosmic Microwave Background", CMB). This comes from the time that the Universe was so hot that everything was ionized. It cooled but there was still all the light that was emitted (everything was glowing). It went literally in every direction. This light has been measured to be uniform to about 1/10000... in all directions (due to redshift, the peak wavelength is in the microwave spectrum - a blackbody around 2.7K). We are moving with respect to it (but
Re: This always amazes me... (Score:2)
As a reply to my comment, I'm gonna be notified, so I read it.
Alas, I understand CMB, fortunately I don't operate on and amateur band that would possibly be affected by CMB interference, which is minimal by any measure.
But I'll read up on how CMB is employed as a reference.
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Um, relativity teaches me that it is relative, whatever it is. So, rocketing through space relative to what, us? And the Solar System is also rocketing through space, relative to what?
Relative to the center of the "Cosmic Owl" galaxies, where it likely originated before being "kicked" out.
But is it sentient? (Score:1)
Someone get Greg Benford [wikipedia.org] on the phone.
Clumsy - there are faster claimed stars: S5-HVS1 (Score:1)
"10 million times larger than the sun," : Even though Space.com was quoted, it's a poor choice of words, since neither mass nor diameter is specified.
Here, in the Slashdot article, the black hole isn't identified by name. Poor writing - reads like hype.
Capitalization: "sun" should be "Sun".
Re: (Score:3)
From the notes:
For visualization reasons, I had to make the black holes much larger. Their real size (Schwarzschild radii) are: 0.5 M_Earth = 0.44 cm
In summary: Anything larger than a beer can a universe away and we're fucked out of existence, ripped apart as if goatse was a god with hands ripping mass and space apart.
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"10 million times larger than the sun," : Even though Space.com was quoted, it's a poor choice of words, since neither mass nor diameter is specified.
Here, in the Slashdot article, the black hole isn't identified by name. Poor writing - reads like hype.
Capitalization: "sun" should be "Sun".
Indeed, look at the size of the legs an elephant needs to support its mass so twice the diameter is much more than twice the mass, given the same density of course. It could even be 10 million times the diameter of the sun and only half the mass with different densities although I'd expect a black hole to have a higher density than the Sun.
Re:Clumsy - there are faster claimed stars: S5-HVS (Score:4, Funny)
It's a black hole, the diameter is 0. You can safely assume it's mass.
EDIT: Yes, people who are wrong all the time, I know some report the diameter as being whatever the diameter of the event horizon or Schwarzschild boundary is, but scientists don't, that's not actually the diameter, they'll tell you the event horizon or Schwarzschild boundary diameter if you ask, but they won't claim it's the diameter of the black hole, so shush.)
EDIT2: Yes, I also know it's generally the "Schwarzschild *radius*", but "the diameter of the Schwarzschild radius" just looks bad to me. Again, shush.)
EDIT3: Yes, I know Slashdot doesn't have an edit button... or does it? Could I be testing a hidden feature? Maybe I'm a beta tester for a revision of Slashcode? Or maybe I just right clicked, inspect element, found the edit button, and removed the style="display: none;" tag on it? You'll never know.
interesting bit:triggering star formation (Score:3)
Black hole inverts moderation standards (Score:3)
I just knew browsing this thread at -1 was going to be a lot of fun
Fascinating! (Score:2)
Now, yes, there are predictions that you could get a supermassive black hole launched into space, especially during a galaxy merger if the velocity of the smaller black hole exceeds the escape velocity of the combined galaxy.
But I'd be wary of assuming that it's a launched black hole, unless we can find the merger it comes from. There may be ways for such a black hole to form that cause the stars to be launched away rather than the black hole being flung, and if a galaxy isn't rotating fast enough to be sta