A team of astronomers has announced the existence of an "invisible monster on the loose", in the form of a "runaway" supermassive black hole speeding through the universe, unlike anything they've seen before.
And the supermassive black hole is hurtling through the universe so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel the 237,674-mile journey from Earth to the Moon in just 14 minutes.
Weighing as much as 20 million suns, it left behind a chain of stars measuring 200,000 light-years across, twice the diameter of the Milky Way.
Scientists identified the possible black hole findings in a Yale University study. Lead author of the study, Professor Peter van Dokkum, said: “We think we are witnessing an awakening behind the black hole as the gas cools and is able to form stars. So we look at the formation of stars that follow the black hole.”
Despite black holes having a reputation as destructive consumers of light and matter, the strangely fast black hole was spotted by NASA's telescope colliding with gas in front of it and setting off new star formation in its wake.
The scientists, whose research was published in The Astrophysics Journal Letters, believe that the gas is likely being shocked and heated by either the rapid motion of the black hole or the high radiation coming from the accretion disk, which is made up of the spinning particles that flow around the black hole. Instead, the black hole, 7.5 billion light-years from Earth, blows gas in front of it, leading to star formation.
Scientists said they had never seen anything like this phenomenon, which was accidentally captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble images show that the black hole is at one end of a pillar extending into its parent galaxy.
The outer end of this plume contains a "notably bright knot of ionized oxygen," which scientists suggest may be the result of heat from the motion of the black hole.
Okaz (Washington)