Extremely Rare Wandering Supermassive Black Hole Discovered Racing Through Space! (SpaceFix) 4K

As the name suggests, supermassive black holes are supermassive. They contain millions, if not billions of times more mass than our sun and can grow to enormous sizes, some larger than our entire solar system. Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes lie at the centre of virtually all large galaxies, including our own, the Milky Way, and they have even been detected by observing their effects on nearby stars and gas. Although these cosmic monsters are surrounded by swirling material moving at incredible speeds, the majority of supermassive black holes are thought to be resting objects that do not move around. But when astronomers observed the dense heart of a galaxy named J04372456, they discovered something unexpected, a supermassive black hole on the move, and it's moving very fast, at an estimated 110,000 miles per hour, which is 177,000 kilometers an hour. Before we dive even further into this black hole mystery, I would like to say a quick thank you to the sponsor of this video, CuriosityStream. If you like my videos, then you're going to love CuriosityStream, which has an entire section dedicated to space-related programs, as well as thousands of other documentaries and TV shows on topics such as history, nature, science, technology, and so much more. With the ability to stream to any device, anytime, anywhere, you can watch award-winning, exclusive, and original documentaries that are sure to satisfy your thirst for knowledge. So, if you're like me and love watching high-quality, binge-worthy content that allows you to explore new subjects, click on the link in the description and use my code V101Science to sign up for just $14.99 for the entire year. Okay, back to the video. The supermassive black hole in question is roughly 3 million times heavier than our sun and is racing through the center of the galaxy J04372456, which is located around 230 million light-years away. Scientists have long theorized that supermassive black holes could move, but such movement is rare because their giant mass requires an equally enormous force to get them going. Astronomer Dominic Pesce, who led this study, used the example of kicking a bowling ball compared to a soccer ball. The heavy bowling ball would be considerably more difficult to kick into motion than a light soccer ball, and so this mysterious supermassive black hole must have something equally supermassive affecting it in order for it to be hurtling around at more than 30 miles every second, which is 48 kilometers a second. Currently, scientists are unsure what is causing this colossal, light-devouring monster to move around so fast, but they do suspect the reason is one of two possibilities. The first possibility could be that scientists have observed the aftermath of two supermassive black holes merging together, causing a new, single black hole that is recoiling back and forth as it slowly settles down. The second, and more exciting possibility, is that scientists have identified a binary supermassive black hole system, a cosmic partnership that is expected to exist throughout the universe in abundance, but so far has been difficult to find clear examples of. If this possibility is correct, then at the center of this distant galaxy, two gigantic black holes are battling it out as they spin around each other, one of which is currently hidden from our observations and could be even more massive than the other. Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics identified this wandering black hole during a five-year period that compared the velocities of 10 distant galaxies and the supermassive black holes at their center. They specifically studied black holes that contained water molecules within their accretion disks, which is the violently swirling spiral of material that surrounds them. According to astronomers, as the water orbits the black hole, it produces a specific signal known as a water maser. When studied with a combined network of radio antennas, water masers can help measure a black hole's velocity very precisely, and it was by using this technique that helped determine that nine of the 10 supermassive black holes were at rest, but that one was on the move. Although this gravitational giant is moving very fast, it's not the fastest supermassive black hole that has been identified, because back in 2017, scientists announced that they had detected what they think is an object one billion times the mass of the sun hurtling out of its galaxy at an estimated speed of 5 million miles per hour, which is around 8 million kilometers an hour. This supermassive black hole, or quasar as it's more accurately described, was likely propelled out of the center of its galaxy by immense gravitational waves that were caused by the merging of two ancient black holes, an event that researchers estimate would have produced the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovas exploding at the same time. Scientists will continue to study and observe this newly identified moving supermassive black hole and hopefully, in time, the mystery of why it is hurtling around the center of its galaxy will be solved.