Blazing Like 10 Billion Suns: NASA’s Swift Sees a Wandering Black Hole Devouring a Star
Researchers used a new search method to confirm one of the rarest cosmic events, with the black hole radiating about 10 billion suns at peak.
- NASA researchers identified an 'orphan' supermassive black hole consuming a star about 750 million light-years from Earth, located roughly 30,000 light-years from its host galaxy's center.
- Astronomers typically locate supermassive black holes in galactic cores where they reside, but this 'orphan' sits unusually far from the galactic center, marking the first confirmed event at such a great distance from a galaxy.
- The Zwicky Transient Facility detected the flare in November 2025, while NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory measured the event's temperature at about 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit and confirmed the black hole weighs roughly 1 million times the Sun.
- Future tools including the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will expand the search zone across 9 billion years of cosmic history, enabling detection of many more wandering black holes.
- Theories suggest the black hole originated from a violent collision between galaxies, which may have flung it toward the periphery, helping scientists understand how galaxies and their supermassive black holes merge and evolve over time.
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11 Articles
Find out how NASA detected a wandering black hole that destroyed a star and why the find can change its search in the universe.
Blazing like 10 billion suns: NASA’s Swift sees a wandering black hole devouring a star
NASA’s Swift Observatory observed a supermassive black hole ripping apart a star more than 30,000 light-years from the center of a distant galaxy. The extraordinary flare briefly outshone its entire host galaxy in ultraviolet light and revealed a black hole about a million times the Sun’s mass.
This Star Is Racing Around the Milky Way’s Black Hole at 8% the Speed of Light
A fast-moving star near the Milky Way’s central black hole could test gravity under unusually extreme conditions. General relativity provides a remarkably precise description of gravity, but most everyday calculations do not require it. Newton’s law of universal gravitation is accurate enough to guide spacecraft across the solar system and describe the motion of most [...]
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