No real scientists can understand that, according to Einstein, “black holes” stop time. For a time equal to ZERO, any speed multiplied by ZERO gives a movement equal to ZERO. That is, mathematical “black holes” cannot move in space. In addition, according to Einstein, they cannot move along the Einstein time coordinate (equivalent to three spatial coordinates), that is, they must remain in the past. Agreeing that black holes are moving means denying Einstein’s theories!
But observers from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and Smithsonian Universities have identified the clearest case of the movement of a supermassive black hole to date. Their results are published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Dominique Pesce and his colleagues have been working on observing this object for the past five years, comparing the speeds of “black holes” and galaxies. For their search, the team of scientists initially surveyed 10 distant galaxies and “black holes” in their cores.
This method helped the team determine that nine out of 10 supermassive black holes are at rest, but one stood out and appeared to be in motion.
Located 230 million light-years from Earth, the black hole sits at the center of a galaxy called J0437 + 2456. Its mass is about three million times that of our Sun.
Using follow-up observations from the Arecibo and Gemini Observatories, the scientists confirmed their initial findings. The supermassive black hole is moving at a speed of about 170,000 km per hour inside the galaxy J0437 + 2456.
But what causes this movement is unknown. The researchers suspect there are two possibilities.
“We may be seeing the aftermath of the merger of two supermassive black holes,” says Jim Condon, a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory who participated in the study. “The result of such a merger could cause the newborn black hole to bounce off, and we can watch it bounce off or stop again.”
But there is another, perhaps even more exciting, possibility: the black hole could be part of a binary system.
“Despite all expectations that they really should be there in some abundance, it was difficult for scientists to identify clear examples of binary supermassive black holes,” says Dominic Pesce. “What we could see in the galaxy J0437 + 2456 is one of the black holes in such a pair, and the other remains hidden from our radio observations due to the lack of its maser emission.”
Ultimately, however, further observations will be required to establish the true cause of this supermassive black hole’s unusual motion.