WEBB TELESCOPE TO INVESTIGATE ROGUE BLACK HOLE ON THE LAM FROM ITS GALAXY

7.19.2022 1:30 PM

A black hole is speeding through space at several million miles per hour.

DORIS ELÍN URRUTIA

IN 2012, astronomers reported that cosmic forces had jettisoned the massive black hole CID-42 at a speed of several million miles per hour out of the center of its galaxy. It runs contrary to the idea that supermassive black holes live at the core of all big galaxies in the universe.

Ten years later, this team is among the lucky few to gaze through the sensitive eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as part of Cycle 1, which begins in November 2023 and runs until January 2024.

They hope the space telescope’s hyper-sensitivity will get to the root of what is happening.

“A lot of people are interested in using JWST because it is the most powerful space telescope ever built,” Francisco Muller Sanchez, an astrophysicist at the University of Memphis and leader of the upcoming CID-42 study, tells Inverse.

“The things that we hope to see cannot be seen with any other telescope, and it was not possible to see those things in the past,” he adds.

More:
https://www.inverse.com/science/migrating-black-hole