Supermassive black holes have been found at the center of almost every galaxy, sucking up anything unlucky to fall into its maw \u2014 including light itself \u2014 through unfathomable gravitational forces.<\/p>\n
Even at the center of our own galaxy, astronomers have spotted such a black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A*. Despite their frequent appearance in observations, the mysterious astronomical objects largely remain a mystery. For now, we can only guess at how they formed.<\/p>\n
Now, an international team of astronomers claim to have made a baffling discovery with the help of NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope: the first runaway supermassive black hole that\u2019s rocketing away from its home at a staggering, potentially record-setting speed of 2.2 million miles per hour.<\/p>\n
As Space.com reports<\/a>, if confirmed it wouldn\u2019t just be the first object of its kind to have been spotted: it may be one of the fastest-moving celestial bodies ever detected, an intriguing new wrinkle in our efforts to better understand supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s absolutely enormous, clocking in at 10 million times the mass of the Sun, and is careening through the \u201cCosmic Owl,\u201d an interacting pair of galaxies around eight billion light-years away<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also pushing a \u201cbow-shock\u201d of matter the size of an entire galaxy in front of it, while allowing stars to form in an enormous 200,00 light-year-long tail of gas behind it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt boggles the mind!\u201d Yale University Pieter van Dokkum, an astronomer and lead author of a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper<\/a> about the cosmic monstrosity, told Space.com. \u201cThe forces that are needed to dislodge such a massive black hole from its home are enormous. And yet, it was predicted that such escapes should occur!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the only black hole that has been found far away from its former home,\u201d he added. \u201cThat made it the best candidate [for a] runaway supermassive black hole, but what was missing was confirmation.\u201d<\/p>\n