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Physicists Determine Cause of "Runaway" Supermassive Black Hole
Confirmed
In Short: Further improvements in resolution or even a longer time series would let us start exploring even finer details of the supermassive black hole.
Further improvements in resolution or even a longer time series would let us start exploring even finer details of the supermassive black hole.
Credit: NASA/ESA/Pieter van Dokkum (Yale)/Joseph DePasquale (STScI) The SMBH in question, known as RBH-1, was previously identified by another team of astronomers, who determined it was a black hole hurtling through intergalactic space.
This orbit suggested that, early in 2023, it had its closest approach to the black hole, one that took it closer than any star we had previously identified.
This allowed them to trace the SMBH back to its source and conclude that the black hole merger that produced the SMBH was responsible for its ejection.
In 2023, this allowed them to spot a star moving away from the black hole, which they termed S301.
This suggests that the event that formed RBH-1 resulted from a merger between two galaxies roughly 70 million years ago, with the two progenitor black holes being located at their centers.
As Webb's observations showed not long ago, massive black holes appear to have evolved relatively quickly in the early Universe - less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
This revealed that the parent black holes were likely similar in mass, with one being (at most) six times as massive as the other.
What's confirmed
What's still developing
- Further details were still being reported.