A huge black hole could be being ejected from its galaxy at several million kilometers per hour, according to a study carried out by scientists from the Smithsonian Institute of Astrophysics (USA). These findings also verify the existence of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Although no material particle, not even light, is capable of escaping from a black hole, they nevertheless have the capacity to emit X-rays, a property that astrophysicists take advantage of to study these mysterious giants. In this case, the scientists studied the X-ray emissions in the CID-42 galaxy, about 4 billion light years from Earth, and which appears to be the result of the relatively recent merger of two giant galaxies. CID-42 contains two patches of light, one in the center of the galaxy and one at the edge. When analyzing the spots, the astronomers detected that only one of them, the one on the edge, emitted X-rays.
Laura Blecha, one of the authors of the work, maintains that there are two explanations for this phenomenon. The first is that both spots are black holes, and therefore both emit X-rays, but in the case of the central hole, a large concentration of dust hides said emission.
On the other hand, the central spot could simply be a new star-forming core, and the edge spot would be a black hole, several million times heavier than the Sun, which is being ejected from the galaxy at a speed of 2,000. kilometers per second.
The scientists themselves are astonished: “it is difficult to believe that a black hole that weighs millions of times the Sun can be set in motion, and expelled from the galaxy at high speed,” says Francesca Civano, one of the authors. “However, these data confirm the idea that the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein can exert an extremely powerful force.”
