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Scientists have discovered the first-ever confirmed “runaway” supermassive black hole (SMBH). The black hole is estimated to have the mass of 20 million suns\u00a0and is moving away from its original galaxy at a staggering 2.2 million mph, with a predictably huge wake behind it. The discovery was announced by Yale University’s Pieter van Dokkum and a team of scientists in a paper titled\u00a0“JWST Confirmation of a Runaway Supermassive Black Hole via its Supersonic Bow Shock,” uploaded to arXiv<\/a>\u00a0(an open-access repository for preprint academic articles) in December 2025.<\/p>\n Van\u00a0Dokkum and fellow scientists first spotted the potential runaway black hole in 2023\u00a0when analyzing a Hubble Space\u00a0Telescope image. The clue?\u00a0A thin line connected to the center of a galaxy in the image. Speaking to Live Science<\/a> in 2023, Van Dokkum said that analyzing the line led the team to interpret that it was “seeing a very massive black hole that was ejected from the galaxy, leaving a trail of gas and newly formed stars in its wake.” The team’s findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/a> that same year.<\/p>\n However, further study was necessary to confirm that it was indeed a runaway SMBH. For this, the team turned to the\u00a0James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which has given us\u00a0some of the most striking images of our universe<\/a> to date. The JWST’s powerful imaging hardware showed\u00a0a bow shock present at the front of the SMBH, confirming that the black hole was indeed escaping its galaxy at a rapid pace.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n How does a supermassive black hole escape its galaxy?<\/p>\n Supermassive black holes are, in and of themselves, one of the many as-yet unresolved mysteries about black holes<\/a>. While scientists know they exist and are fairly confident that every galaxy has one, they have yet to find a definitive answer to how they form and\u00a0grow so big so quickly. There are theories, but there’s nothing definitive as of yet.<\/p>\n As for this particular SMBH, the December 2025 paper<\/a>\u00a0theorizes that it was set on an escape trajectory via a “velocity kick” from either gravitational-wave recoil or a three-body interaction, with the scientists indicating that the former is the more likely mechanism. Speaking to Live Science<\/a>, lead author Pieter van Dokkum explained that these so-called velocity kicks can happen when two or more supermassive black holes end up in very close proximity. When this happens, the strong, orbit-altering gravitational pull of each black hole interacts with the other’s, culminating in one of the two being booted out into space.<\/p>\n This runaway black hole may not be the only one out there, with the paper naming several other candidates. Of note is a massive black hole in the dwarf galaxy MaNGA 12772-12704, offset from the galaxy’s center by about 1 kiloparsec, first reported in a short communication published in Volume 70, Issue 21 of Science Bulletin<\/a>. Thus far, though, van Dokkum’s team is the\u00a0only one to have confirmation \u2014 pending peer review, of course \u2014 of a runaway SMBH.<\/p>\n
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