Uploads from Dr. Becky

Currently Playing: A 3.5 million mph rogue supermassive black hole

What’s scarier than a supermassive black hole? How about a supermassive black hole on the run, ejected from the centre of its galaxy at over 3.5 million miles per hour and leaving a trail of newly formed stars in its wake? At least that’s what one research group of astrophysicists think is responsible for this faint line of light first seen in an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2022. But, there’s now a big debate raging over whether that’s really what this fuzzy smudge is, with another research group claiming that it’s not a runaway SMBH at all, but instead just a very thin, flat galaxy that we’re seeing from the side, edge-on. And now data taken by the James Webb Space Telescope has added more fuel to the fire on both sides of the argument. So what is going on here? In this video, we find out! Papers mentioned: Van Dokkum et al. (2026) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.04166 Van Dokkum et al. (2023) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2302.04888 Almeida et al (2023) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.12344 Almeida et al (2026) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.10682 Islam et al. (2026) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.18986 Simmons, Smethurst, Lintott (2017) - https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/470/2/1559/3859617 Smethurst et al. (2025) - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/add7d0/pdf Smethurst et al. (2024) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.21869 Smethurst et al. (2022) - https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.13677 Previous videos: https://youtu.be/6N-dOBsCydg?t=1116 00:00 - Introduction 01:30 - I - The serendipitous discovery of RBH-1 04:03 - II - The evidence in favour of the runaway SMBH explanation 09:05 - III - The evidence in favour of the edge-on disk galaxy explanation 12:46 - IV - How can we find more of these candidate runaway supermassive black holes 15:27 - Bloopers Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: martino.freelance@gmail.com Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com