BREAKING: ‘Runaway’ black hole the size of 20,000,000 suns speeding through space

Astronomers have spotted a runaway supermassive black hole, seemingly ejected from its home galaxy and racing through space with a chain of stars trailing in its wake.

BREAKING NEWS – A MASSIVE RUNAWAY BLACK HOLE WAS SPOTTED

According to arXiv the discovery offers the first observational evidence that supermassive black holes can be ejected from their home galaxies to roam interstellar space.

The researchers discovered the runaway black hole as a bright streak of light while using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the dwarf galaxy RCP 28, located about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth.

WHAT SIZE IS THIS BLACK HOLE?

The streak measures more than 200,000 light-years long — roughly twice the width of the Milky Way — and is thought to be made of compressed gas that is actively forming stars.

The gas trails a black hole estimated to measure 20 million times the sun’s mass and is speeding away from its home galaxy at 3.5 million mph (5.6 million km/h), or roughly 4,500 times the speed of sound.

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THE BLACK HOLE MEASURES 20 MILLION TIMES THE SUN’S MASS

The team concluded that the explanation that best fits the streak is a supermassive black hole blasting through the gas surrounding its galaxy while compressing it enough to trigger star formation in its wake.

The lead study author Pieter van Dokkum(opens in new tab), a professor of physics and astronomy at Yale University, told the media if confirmed, it would be the first time that we have clear evidence that supermassive black holes can escape from galaxies.

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A HUGE CHUNK OF THE SUN BREAKS OFF

Earlier this month, scientists were baffled when a huge chunk of the sun broke off its surface, creating a tornado-like swirl around its North Pole.

Dr. Tamitha Skov, a space weather physicist who regularly shares updates on social media, wrote on Twitter that a ‘material’ from a northern prominence broke away from the main filament and was circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of the sun.

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