Astronomers spot best-yet example of a wandering supermassive black hole
Giant black holes adrift in deep space are normally invisible—unless they’re dining on stars
Astronomers have discovered the best example yet of a supermassive black hole wandering freely in space. Typically, these colossal black holes are found at the centers of galaxies, but this one was located over 750 million light-years away, far from its galactic home. The discovery was made possible by an exceptionally bright event—a tidal disruption event (TDE) triggered when a star was torn apart by the black hole's powerful gravitational forces.
This TDE emitted a flare of light 10 billion times brighter than our Sun, allowing the astronomers to spot the black hole despite its remote location. The wandering black hole, with a mass one million times that of our Sun, is located in the constellation Cetus within a massive galaxy. This extraordinary find was made possible by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), which continuously scans the night sky for significant celestial events.
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