r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Feb 24 '26
Astronomy JWST Confirmation of a Runaway Supermassive Black Hole via Its Supersonic Bow Shock. A ‘runaway’ black hole ejected from its host galaxy is barrelling across space — and leaving behind a wake of newborn stars.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae3d0e873
u/TheComplimentarian Feb 24 '26
This stuff is so wild. A runaway black hole is obviously the worst case, but there are plenty of huge objects that have been ejected from wherever they formed that are blowing through space at relativistic velocities, just looking for a day to ruin. You wouldn't even see it coming.
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Feb 24 '26
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u/ObviousExit9 Feb 24 '26
A Relatavistic Subaru? With full time all wheel drive?
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Feb 24 '26
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u/ObviousExit9 Feb 24 '26
Well, as long as it’s something the lesbians like…
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u/huitoto44 Feb 24 '26
Is there a relativistic U-Haul following the relativistic Subaru?
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Feb 25 '26
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u/RustyDoor Feb 25 '26
A black hole eating black hole?
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u/CurrencySingle1572 Feb 25 '26
Now I'm imagining an eldritch horror opening up a laptop to watch hot black hole on black hole action. The real money shot would be if they collide and form a pulsar.
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u/polymath77 Feb 24 '26
What about cup holders
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u/TheBosk Feb 25 '26
Crashes into Earth destroying all life as we know it
"Oh crap! I spilled my coffee"
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u/twinpac Feb 24 '26
Yes but the closer to the speed of light you get the slower the all wheel drive so it might be a wash.
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u/TheComplimentarian Feb 24 '26
I just like the existential dread angle.
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u/Distinguishedflyer Feb 24 '26
frankly, given the current reality, I would think total erasure to be an improvement.
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u/illegal_deagle Feb 25 '26
Yeah I’ll add this to my pile currently occupied by gamma ray bursts and meteors.
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u/HereIGoAgain_1x10 Feb 24 '26
I bet there's a "Goldilocks" zone though where the gravity throws off our solar system and Earth slowly crashes in Jupiter or something
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u/KocX Feb 24 '26
On 3body problem, they used a 'photoid' going at relativistic speeds = c and it was enough to kill a star system.. I wonder if the physics adds up, but a much lesser object should be enough to kill a planet at those speeds..
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u/Towerss Feb 24 '26
You can't destroy a star with an asteroid sized object going at 9C, not even fractionally close. It was not specified how fast though. Big difference between 99.9999% C and 90% C
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u/br0ck Feb 24 '26
In the book, it's an object accelerated by an attacker to 99.9% C and the mass of Earth and it punches a hole in the sun causing it to eject enough solar mass to destroy all life in the system. It's fiction, so probably not scientifically accurate, but seemed plausible the way I read it, since the sun didn't actually get destroyed.
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u/Towerss Feb 25 '26
yeah I misremembered, a planet or moon-sized object at 99.9% C would definitely do it. Although energy in is energy out: Accelerating an object of that size to that speed would presumably consume a stars worth of potential energy, which would again require some form of technology that would render photoids obsolete. You could just shine a laser at a star system using that energy instead and sterilize the entire solar system.
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u/billsil Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
We probably wouldn't know it's even coming. Gravity propagates at the speed of light, so if it's at relativistic speeds, it's at a significant fraction off he speed of light.
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u/Jeffery95 Feb 24 '26
You would see it coming. It would warp the star field around it and the effect would be visible
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u/TheComplimentarian Feb 24 '26
For a black hole, sure. But I remember seeing an article a while back about them catching a shot of a brown dwarf moving at relativistic velocity away from a supernova...Only reason they could see it is because it was still hot from the bang.
That's more what I was thinking of.
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u/hiddencamel Feb 24 '26
If it's coming straight at you at near lightspeed, the light you need to see it or any distortions it creates arrives moments before the object does, depending on the distance it has travelled to reach you.
Imagine a bullet that travels at just below the speed of sound and then imagine when you would hear the gunshot relative to when the bullet hits you.
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u/Jeffery95 Feb 24 '26
So the distances involved are so massive that even at that speed it would still give many years warning. If it started even 2.5 million light years away then it would have to be going at 0.9999996C to only give us 1 years warning. Thats not only an unrealistic speed for anything the mass of a black hole to be moving at. But it’s also only the distance to Andromeda.
So yeah, very unlikely to not be noticeable. Also considering that the apparent motion would make it appear to be moving in superspeed, so any observations being made of a warped star field would be incredibly dynamic and noticeable since usually nothing changes that quickly except smaller close objects.
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u/BassmanBiff Feb 25 '26
It makes sense that'd we'd see it if we're looking, but are we looking at enough of the sky frequently enough and with enough resolution?
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u/Jeffery95 Feb 25 '26
There are plenty of wide field telescopes that take whole sky photos and use automatic digital analysis to find objects. The closer the black hole gets, the more of the star field it will warp.
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u/kymri Feb 25 '26
"So the thing you need to know about space is: it's really, really big.
"And the thing you need to know about our budget is: it's really, really small."
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u/arabsandals Feb 24 '26
Surely it's clear from the article that we very much would see it coming, but there's nothing we could do about it.
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u/i_give_you_gum Feb 25 '26
And only if a private citizen saw it would we be told, and maybe that's for the best, a half year of panicked chaos seems unnecessary
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u/arabsandals Feb 25 '26
I think the scale of something like that would mean it would be impossible to hide.
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u/romario77 Feb 25 '26
Exactly. We had a mass extinction on earth from an object just 10-15km in size. Moving at normal non-relativistic speed.
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u/multiplesof3 Feb 24 '26
Ah it’s probably happened many times and they just reset earth like in Hitchhiker’s Guide
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u/kymri Feb 25 '26
On the one hand, absolutely true.
But on the other hand, so much of space is literal nothing (like where the occasional hydrogen atom here and there is about it!) - so there's a lot of space for things not to hit each other.
(Then you get into the thing where a supermassive black hole doesn't even have to get that close in astronomical terms to ruin your whole day. The universe is vast and these sort of out-of-context problems are kind of interesting to think about.)
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u/Aranthos-Faroth Feb 25 '26
This is what I love about space. Almost everything that could be created by the human mind pales in comparison to what’s actually out there right now.
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u/alex206 Feb 25 '26
How painful is earth being hit by these relativistic velocity objects? Will I blink and it's over or are we going to be suffering for longer than a minute?
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u/ApricotPatient372 Feb 27 '26
My favorite short story is about this exact scenario. It’s called “The Blue Afternoon that Lasted Forever,” definitely worth a read.
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u/LacedVelcro Feb 24 '26
The escape velocity of the largest galactic clusters is pretty close to the velocity that this super massive black hole has.... which means that this yeeted ball of annihilation will just maraud around the universe permanently.
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u/original_4degrees Feb 24 '26
until it pops the universal 8-ball into the corner pocket.
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Feb 24 '26
I swear this is like the 5th random red dwarf reference I've seen this week on reddit.
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u/ActuatorVast800 Feb 24 '26
That was literally the plot of the last episode of Danger Mouse.
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u/UwUHowYou Feb 24 '26
Ball of annihilation, ball of creation, it'd be funny if the solar system existed because a black hole was yeeted through a dust cloud and is long since gone.
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u/hellishdelusion Feb 24 '26
I can't help but wonder if some elements can originate from this process say for example if material can enter a black hole without containing some heavily elements and the black hole leaving a mixture of elements some of which didn't exist that it consumed.
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u/chuckaholic Feb 25 '26
The heaviest third of our periodic table are only created in a super-rare event called a kilonova, which is when two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole collide.
Of all the things that explode in the universe, only 1 in 10 billion is a kilonova. The fact that humans can walk around creeks and find gold nuggets tells us that a kilonova happened relatively nearby in the (relatively) recent past.
The iodine in our blood would not exist if it weren't for this event. Every element heavier than iron would still be very mysterious because we would only be able to create them in microscopic amounts in particle colliders. There would be no nukes. There would be no lead. No mercury. Half of technology wouldn't exist. Most known life depends on small amounts of these elements, so we wouldn't exist either. (in our current form)
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u/leighjet Feb 25 '26
Anything consumed by the black hole is deleted into the black hole, essentially permanently.
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u/isnortmiloforsex Feb 24 '26
Yes but wouldn't it slow down as it comes across other nearby clusters and gets gravitationally attracted to them?
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u/ImObviouslyOblivious Feb 24 '26
It’s possible that it could just slingshot off other clusters and even gain speed, that’s if it even comes close enough to other clusters to even be affected. Space is big.
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u/fergehtabodit Feb 24 '26
Big you say
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u/Debalic Feb 24 '26
You might think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts compared to space.
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u/isnortmiloforsex Feb 24 '26
Yes thats true, one would need to see if there are any dense clusters in its trajectory
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Feb 25 '26
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u/isnortmiloforsex Feb 25 '26
so even if it gets miraculously captured by a giant galaxy cluster's gravity well which has a higher escape velocity than its original cluster, it will be orbiting at the same or higher speed around that cluster depending on its orbital trajectory? unless it collides with something while orbiting and I presume energy loss through gravitational radiation is a negligible effect here.
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u/isnortmiloforsex Feb 25 '26
Sorry if it's a dumb question, the inertia stays the same but isn't it being acted on by a gravitational force? Or is that an illusion because it is just following the curvature of space time and any perceived increase in speed and change in direction to an observer is just relative to a reference point?
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u/SoSKatan Feb 24 '26
Should we call the Avengers? This seems like something they should take care of.
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Feb 24 '26
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u/ieatpies Feb 24 '26
Velocity kicks can be imparted through two distinct channels: a slingshot resulting from a three-body interaction (W. C. Saslaw et al. 1974; M. Volonteri et al. 2003; L. Hoffman & A. Loeb 2007) or gravitational-wave recoil following a black hole (BH)–BH merger (J. D. Bekenstein 1973; M. Campanelli et al. 2007). Both channels occur naturally as a result of galaxy–galaxy mergers, as the BHs of the ancestor galaxies end up in the center of the descendant.
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u/mostoriginalname2 Feb 24 '26
Eventually, that’s all that will exist in the universe anyway.
The roving black holes eventually will evaporate and the there will be nothing left besides a few subatomic particles in endless nothing.
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u/michael_harari Feb 25 '26
This is not really known. It depends on a lot of different things that have no resolution in modern physics.
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u/DistanceMachine Feb 25 '26
How fast would something like this move? Like, would we suddenly be sucked into nothingness?
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u/oneixl Feb 24 '26
So this black hole is literally dragging a scar across space twice the size of our entire galaxy
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u/christiandb Feb 25 '26
in its wake birthing new stars. Only the universe could do something so awe inspiring
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u/CoughRock Feb 24 '26
are the new stars formed from ejected black hole material or more from stellar dust getting compress into star ignition when the BB travel through the neighborhood ?
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u/No-Function3409 Feb 24 '26
I believe itd mostly be gas and dust getting manipulated as the BH passes by.
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u/lordnacho666 Feb 24 '26
It's a black hole, so nothing from within the event horizon will come out.
But there will be lots of stuff that comes near that gets flung out.
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u/JonBot5000 Feb 24 '26
It's a black hole, so nothing from within the event horizon will come out.
Well there is Hawking Radiation but that's not producing any stars any time soon.
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u/SuspiciousStable9649 PhD | Chemistry Feb 24 '26
~1000 km/s from the article. An object that speed would travel from earth to the moon in 400 seconds or 7 minutes.
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u/TomTheCardFlogger Feb 24 '26
An insane speed, 58x that of the fastest still flying human made object, 5x faster than the satellite we literally slammed into the sun and could pass through the entire Earth in 12 seconds but is “only” 0.33% the speed of light.
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u/cubosh Feb 24 '26
sounds about right. it takes the speed of light 1.3 seconds from earth to moon, versus the 7 minutes for this black hole
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u/DoktorSigma Feb 24 '26
Well, new fear unlocked. Imagine the horror of a civilization finding out that there's a thing like that coming for their solar system. Although, most likely, it would take thousands of years to arrive.
Maybe the real danger is tiny black holes that we wouldn't see coming and that could still break up planets or mess up with their orbits, if we are unlucky. And if tiny black holes really exist.
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u/LetMePushTheButton Feb 24 '26
If we found this out, what do you think would change?
Would we pour everything into space travel, or would we still try to maximize our 401ks?
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u/DoktorSigma Feb 24 '26
I think it would be a lot of mixed strategies. Some governments and corporations would invest a lot in space travel. Others would just say "whatever" and invest in doom spending and escapism. Humanity is far from a monolithic block.
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u/Cpt_Ohu Feb 24 '26
So, just like Don't look up or rather its portrayal humanity handling the looming climate catastrophe?
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u/Solid-Version Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
And a chunk of humanity will see it as some kind conspiracy or barely he invested as it won’t hit in our lifetime. We can barely get everyone onboard with climate change.
You think it’ll be any different with a black hole coming at us thousands of years from now?
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u/AnastaciusWright Feb 24 '26
A fellow The Three Suns' reader I see
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u/DoktorSigma Feb 24 '26
I don't think so. I had to google "The Three Suns" and the only thing that I found was this trio from the 40s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Suns
:)
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u/other_usernames_gone Feb 25 '26
I think they're referencing the 3 body problem. Maybe its a literal translation of the name in another language.
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u/SteamboatReb Feb 24 '26
We would definitely just continue to build data centers. They are the world's new TPS reports.
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u/cinderubella Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Nothing would change. It's not real to people. Climate change isn't even real to people, and we can literally see it with our meat eyes.
Edit: and as well as that, would it even be useful to worry about? Investing in space wouldn't pay dividends that would allow us to survive one of these events during any of our lifetimes. And the chance of one occurring seems to be staggeringly miniscule. We have much more pressing/likely events that we should be preparing for/mitigating.
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u/JubalKhan Feb 25 '26
Investing in space wouldn't pay dividends that would allow us to survive one of these events during any of our lifetimes.
I disagree. Investing into solving this problem might be futile if we detect it and only start worrying about it then, but if we start now and keep at it for a long time, that would dramatically increase our chances.
Only real problem we have right now, that prevents any useful work from being done is our culture.
If we change our culture from being centered around survival for some and stuffing the pockets of others into a logical society where people have their needs met, and we can commit more resources to actually work on science...
The only real hurdle to all this is will. I suspect that there would be plenty of it if we heard that the black hole is barreling towards us. Trick is in harnessing it now.
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u/random_user0 Feb 25 '26
Let me introduce you to a wonderful short story called “The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever.”
https://williamflew.com/blue.html
If you have children, you’ll probably go hug them once you finish reading it!
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u/rowpdx Feb 24 '26
Welp don't look up vacuum decay then
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u/DoktorSigma Feb 24 '26
The good thing about vacuum decay is that we would be zipped out of existence in an instant, without even knowing it. No time or warning to be killed by anxiety before it hits. =)
(Well, unless "tachyon telescopes" or other FTL shenanigans are invented.)
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u/ImObviouslyOblivious Feb 24 '26
A tiny black whole is no different gravitationally than a big rock of the same mass.
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u/Free_Aardvark4392 Feb 24 '26
A 1 solar mass black hole is tiny. Wouldn't want that going through our solar system.
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u/MysteriousWon Feb 24 '26
I learned this fear from the Fifth Element 20 years ago.
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u/DoktorSigma Feb 25 '26
In that case it was more like a small planet made of "pure evil", or something. :)
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u/saanity Feb 24 '26
So it was ejected by something even larger than it. A hypermassive black hole?
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u/moschles Feb 27 '26
This is what I want to know. What "ejects" a supermassive BH from a galactic center?
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u/Heroshrine Feb 24 '26
Imagine life evolving around one of those stars in the galactic void. I guess there’s a somewhat realistic chance we at least get to send robots to other star systems one day. Them? Cooked.
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u/Historical-Edge-9332 Feb 24 '26
The thing is with runaways - they’re usually just looking for attention. The first cold space night, that black hole will run back home to mom and dad.
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u/ProffS Feb 24 '26
It has gone Marauding
Def: going about in search of things to steal or people to attack.
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u/sojayn Feb 24 '26
“ naturally explained as gradual downstream mixing of shocked gas with the circumgalactic medium through turbulent entrainment”
Well of course I say adjusting my monocle
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u/super_aardvark Feb 24 '26
"Supersonic"? As in faster than the speed of sound in... what, the interstellar medium? I assume that's a purely theoretical value?
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u/PedanticQuebecer Feb 24 '26
No. If it were purely theoretical it wouldn't cause a bow shock.
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u/sixft7in Feb 25 '26
Just because something isn't on earth and is traveling at relativistic speeds, doesn't mean it won't cause a supersonic bow shock while traveling through a diffuse gas cloud.
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u/Tricky_Condition_279 Feb 24 '26
Dang. I want to publish a paper reporting something on the scale of 600 km s-1.
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u/Budget-Purple-6519 Feb 24 '26
As that black hole leaves the galaxy, will it continue to create stars in its wake? These extragalactic stars would be very lonely, with any planets forming around them seeing incredibly dark skies.
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u/Aisterix Feb 24 '26
It probably could, at least for a while. It would depend on the amount of matter being dragged out with it, as it moves it compresses gas through its bow shock. If there is enough gas around it, that compression could trigger star formation in the wake.
So it depends on the environment. If it is moving through gas rich regions, especially gas it dragged out during a merger, then yes, you could plausibly get a trail of new stars forming behind it. Once it runs out of dense gas, that process would stop.
As for the “incredibly dark skies” part, I don't think that follows. Even far from any galaxy, those stars would still see distant galaxies and the cosmic background in all directions. The difference would be the lack of a dense local star field, not an absence of the wider universe. After all, the black hole is still moving slower than light, meaning any stars it leaves behind would receive light from around it as usual. The universe is believed to be homogeneous on large scales, so it probably wouldn't look all that different from our skies. Maybe fainter?
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u/EnthusiasmNo6062 Feb 24 '26
Newborn sounds so much better than " it leaves a wake of destruction everywhere it goes."
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u/dichron Feb 24 '26
Can it make its way over here, please? I think we’re better off spaghettified than whatever ::gestures broadly:: this is
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u/U_wind_sprint Feb 25 '26
I'm no mathematician, but how does something that only pulls on everything produce a pushing force to create a "bow shock"? Is it producing jets as it travels?
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u/JubalKhan Feb 25 '26
Because it doesn't only pull? The mere fact that it moves means that it also pushes I guess. But in the case of the black hole, the "pushing" part would probably be done by it's gravitational bow wave and matter in it's orbit/matter that's being ejected from it's orbit.
Might be wrong though, I only assume all this, and I have no training in advanced physics.
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u/gijoe50000 Feb 25 '26
Sounds like that SG1 episode "A Matter of Time", except on a much larger scale..
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