Aimless In Space

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Giant black hole kicked out of home galaxy

The galaxy at the center of this image contains an X-ray source, CID-42, which astronomers think that contains a massive black hole being ejected at several million miles per hour. The galaxy is located nearly 4 billion light years from Earth.

The main panel is a wide-field optical image of CID-42 and its surroundings. The top right image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the X-ray emission is concentrated in a single source, corresponding to one of the two sources seen in deep observations by Hubble, which is shown in the middle inset box. The bottom inset shows how the X-rays align with the optical data.

Astronomers think that CID-42 is the byproduct of two galaxies that have collided, producing the distinctive tail seen in the upper part of the optical image inset. When this galaxy collision occurred, the supermassive black holes in the center of each galaxy also collided.

The two black holes then merged to form a single black hole, that recoiled from gravitational waves produced by the collision, giving the newly merged black hole a sufficiently large kick for it to eventually escape from the galaxy. In this scenario, the source with the X-rays is the black hole being ejected from the galaxy.

Watch the video: http://youtu.be/-Q3jnQkvU-o: Simulation of black hole ejection.