Scientists have discovered a 'recoiling' black hole at the center of a bright cluster of a distant galaxy that has baffled them.
This black hole is hosted by Abell 2261’s brightest cluster galaxy, which is a result of a supermassive black hole merger.Spanning a little more than one million light-years, the galaxy is about 10 times the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Hubble Space Telescope and Subaru Space Telescope revealed a galactic core is larger than expected for a galaxy its size.
These features were first identified by Space Telescope Science Institute’s Dr. Marc Postman who said the galaxy stood out in the Hubble image.
"When I first saw the image of this galaxy, I knew right away it was unusual," Postman explained. "The core was very diffuse and very large. The challenge was then to make sense of all the data, given what we knew from previous Hubble observations, and come up with a plausible explanation for the intriguing nature of this particular galaxy."
Stars interacting with this supermassive black hole binary can even end up being flung out of the center, taking some energy from the binary with it and causing the binary’s orbit to shrink.
The 'recoiling' black hole was ejected from the center of the galaxy by a powerful force and is now mysteriously floating through space.
It is over 2,000 light-years away and is the densest concentration in A2261-BCG galaxy.
Astronomer Tod Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, a co-author of the Hubble study said "Expecting to find a black hole in every galaxy is sort of like expecting to find a pit inside a peach.''
"With this Hubble observation, we cut into the biggest peach and we can't find the pit. We don't know for sure that the black hole is not there, but Hubble shows that there's no concentration of stars in the core."
As per gas being emitted from the core of the black hole, there was a sufficient amount of material falling onto the black hole to produce jets, but lack of evidence of a bright X-ray core supports the idea that this is relic emission and not current emission.
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