James Webb telescope confirms a supermassive black hole running away from its host galaxy at 2 million mph, researchers say
Yahoo••science
Key Points:
- Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have confirmed the first runaway supermassive black hole, moving at 2.2 million miles per hour and escaping its host galaxy, according to a study led by Yale's Pieter van Dokkum.
- The candidate black hole, with a mass of 20 million suns, was initially detected via a faint stellar wake in Hubble images and later observed with Keck Observatory; JWST provided definitive evidence by capturing a bow shock created by the black hole's high-speed movement.
- This discovery supports longstanding theories that supermassive black holes can be ejected from galaxies through gravitational interactions involving multiple black holes, suggesting a violent encounter among at least two or three black
