• NASA’s Hubble space telescope has detected a supermassive black hole that has been kicked out of the centre of a distant galaxy by what could be the power of gravitational waves.
• Weighing more than one billion suns, the rogue black hole is the most massive black hole ever detected to have been kicked out of its central home.
• Researchers estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovas exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole.
• The most plausible explanation for this propulsive energy is that the monster object was given a kick by gravitational waves unleashed by the merger of two hefty black holes at the centre of the host galaxy, according to the scientists.

Bright quasar

• The images revealed a bright quasar, the energetic signature of a black hole, residing far from the galactic core.
• Black holes reside in the centre of galaxies, so it’s unusual to see a quasar not in the centre.
• The team calculated the black hole’s distance from the core by comparing the distribution of starlight in the host galaxy with that of a normal elliptical galaxy from a computer model.
• The black hole had travelled more than 35,000 light years from the centre, which is more than the distance between the sun and the centre of the Milky Way, according to the study.
• First predicted by Albert Einstein, gravitational waves are ripples in space that are created when two massive objects collide.
• The ripples are similar to the concentric circles produced when a hefty rock is thrown into a pond.

Source: The Hindu