What can wandering black holes teach scientists about the formation and evolution of black holes throughout the universe? This is what a recent study accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated a rare type of black hole that defies traditional black holes. This study has the potential to help astronomers better understand the unique nature of supermassive black holes, which have typically been observed to only exist at the center of galaxies.
This supermassive wandering black hole was discovered due to a tidal disruption event (TDE), which is when a black hole briefly emits light as it swallows a star. Otherwise, this black hole would have remained elusive, and even “invisible” to scientists. This particular TDE, named AT2024tvd, is approximately 1 million times the mass of our Sun and located approximately 600 million light-years from Earth.
Artist’s illustration of a tidal disruption event which starts with a normal black hole (1), a star orbiting the black hole (2), the black hole starting to consume the star (3), the star’s remnants (4), the black hole emitting radiation (5), and a bright flash observed from afar (6). (Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI))
“Tidal disruption events hold great promise for illuminating the presence of massive black holes that we would otherwise not be able to detect,” said Ryan Chornock, who is an associate adjunct professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and a co-author on the study. “Theorists have predicted that a population of massive black holes located away from the centers of galaxies must exist, but now we can use TDEs to find them.”
Due to their destructive nature, black holes remain as one of the most intriguing and mysterious objects in the universe. As noted, supermassive black holes have been observed to exist at the center of galaxies, with our own galaxy containing one, but wandering black holes that are free to travel across space and destroy everything in its path could help astronomers better understand their formation and evolution and what this could mean for finding life beyond Earth.
What new discoveries about wandering black holes will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!