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By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff Harvard-Smithsonian astronomers have observed a gigantic black holespeeding away from its home galaxy like a pebble from a slingshot.The runaway black hole is a curiosity that provides key support forAlbert Einstein s nearly century-old theory of general relativity-- and a rare glimpse of a cosmic eviction unfolding in ouruniverse. Galaxies, including ours, have black holes at their centers. Whentwo galaxies collide and merge, the black holes at their centersgenerally follow suit. The idea that merging black holes could,under the right conditions, be kicked powerfully out of the centerof their galaxy was an idea that followed from Einstein sprediction that there are gravitational waves, ripples in thefabric of space. But without the ability to detect such wavesdirectly, scientists could only see them by scouring catalogsof galaxies to see if they could find an example of such a rarephenomenon in action. These were theoretical calculations -- people predicted a blackhole can get a kick that will expel it from the center of themerged galaxy, but we had not seen evidence for it, said AviLoeb, chairman of the astronomy department at Harvard University. What would be a smoking gun would be to see a black hole not inthe center of the galaxy. The search for such a galaxy lit on a region of space about fourbillion light years away, in a galaxy known as Cosmos ID 42. There,using telescopes -- including NASA s Hubble Space Telescope,ground-based observatories, and the Chandra X-ray observatory -- the researchers saw what appeared to be a black hole barreling awayfrom its home address at several million miles per hour . The new finding, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal laterthis month, opens up plenty of new questions, said FrancescaCivano, a post-doctoral researcher at the Harvard-SmithsonianCenter for Astrophysics who led the work. Are there other errantblack holes, ejected from their homes and wandering the universe?What effect would losing a black hole have on the continuedevolution of the galaxy? And, of more Earthly concern, what of our own galaxy? Loeb pointedout that the Milky Way has a black hole at its center, too. And theMilky Way is on a collision course with the neighboring Andromedagalaxy, which has its own black hole. This story of two black holes coming together will play out inour own neighborhood, Loeb said. In a few billion years. Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com. Follow heron Twitter @carolynyjohnson. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Portable Cell Phone Jammer Manufacturer , Wireless Camera Scanner for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Cell Phone Signal Jammer.
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