Somewhere in the cosmos there may be a black hole that is no longer in the center of its galaxy. In a journal published by the American Astronomical Society, scientists noted that the supermassive black hole that is the center of Abell 2261 may no longer be there. Instead, scientists say it could have been removed from its own galaxy as a result of a process known as gravity wave.
During a setback, two black holes essentially fuse close together, sending ripples through space. In theory, these ripples could push the black hole away from the current location, according to a report by Forbes. ‘It’s enough to kick the black hole completely out of the galaxy and be long gone. It would sail into the intergalactic space, ‘Kayhan Gultekin, the newspaper’s chief astronomer, told the magazine.
In the piece, publishers of the initial journal make sure they can point out that technically they may still be in the current place; it’s just because they can not locate it now after being able to locate it on previous occasions.
“Yet Gultekin says it is too soon to conclude that there is no supermassive black hole in A2261-BCG,” Forbes add. “But if it is not there, it will be the only such large galaxy still discovered without such a massive black hole in the middle. Even our own Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is relatively quiet, but it’s there.
In an interview with Under last summer, Gultekin conceded there is still a lot to learn about black holes, and solving this mystery can help a lot in answering some of the biggest outstanding questions.
“What excites me the most is learning about supermassive black holes through gravitational waves,” Gultekin said. “We need to know for sure that they are merging, and that’s one way to show that it’s happening.”
“There are all sorts of things you can learn with gravitational waves about supermassive black holes, as populations or individual sources, that you can really hard or impossible to learn with traditional electromagnetic astronomy,” he adds.
Cover photo by Photo12 / Universal Images Group via Getty Images