Ejected supermassive black hole?!

By Dr. Becky

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What’s scarier than a supermassive black hole? How about a supermassive black hole on the run, ejected from the centre of its galaxy at over 3.5 million miles per hour and leaving a trail of newly formed stars in its wake? At least that’s what one research group of astrophysicists think is responsible for this faint line of light first seen in an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2022. When this happens, you’ve got two main questions to answer, 1) is it real? And 2) how far away is it? So had to first confirm seen in multiple images taken at different wavelengths, or colours of light, by Hubble, to prove it was real. And not just a weird artefact caused by noise processing, or a fluke cosmic ray charged particle that’s hit the detector here. And then figure out how far away it was - because could either be in foreground, something close to stars in our own milky way galaxy, or in background, in distant universe. Turns out when you do that for this long thin streak, i

Tags: dr beccy, astronomie, physiks