The supermassive black hole, that can devour anything in its path, was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope. It should be found at the centre of its galaxy, but, this image shows it being pushed around by gravitational waves. It will eventually break free from its galaxy and then roam the universe. Fortunately for us, it is currently eight billion light-years from Earth. It is the first time the suspected happening has been confirmed. A NASA spokesman said: "Though there have been several other suspected, similarly booted black holes elsewhere, none has been confirmed so far. "Astronomers think this object is a very strong case.

NASA A CGI of a planet being swallowed by a supermassive black hole.

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"Weighing more than 1 billion suns, the rogue black hole is the most massive black hole ever detected to have been kicked out of its central home." The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a quasar named 3C 186 that is offset from the centre of its galaxy. Astronomers hypothesize that this supermassive black hole was jettisoned from the centre of its galaxy by the recoil from gravitational waves produced by the merging of two supermassive black holes. Researchers estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovas exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole. The spokesman added: "The most plausible explanation for this propulsive energy is that the monster object was given a kick by gravitational waves unleashed by the merger of two hefty black holes at the centre of the host galaxy."

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First predicted by Albert Einstein, gravitational waves are ripples in space that are created when two massive objects collide. The ripples are similar to the concentric circles produced when a hefty rock is thrown into a pond. Last year, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) helped astronomers prove that gravitational waves exist by detecting them emanating from the union of two stellar-mass black holes, which are several times more massive than the sun. Research team leader Marco Chiaberge of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, said: "When I first saw this, I thought we were seeing something very peculiar. "When we combined observations from Hubble, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, it all pointed towards the same scenario. The amount of data we collected, from X-rays to ultraviolet to near-infrared light, is definitely larger than for any of the other candidate rogue black holes."

NASA This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals an unusual sight: a runaway quasar.

Though there have been several other suspected, similarly booted black holes elsewhere, none has been confirmed so far. NASA

Chiaberge's paper will appear in the March 30 issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics. Black holes cannot be observed directly, but they are the energy source at the heart of quasars - intense, compact gushers of radiation that can outshine an entire galaxy. The quasar, named 3C 186, and its host galaxy reside 8 billion light-years away in a galaxy cluster. The team discovered the galaxy's peculiar features while conducting a Hubble survey of distant galaxies unleashing powerful blasts of radiation in the throes of galaxy mergers.

Mr Chiaberge added: "I was anticipating seeing a lot of merging galaxies, and I was expecting to see messy host galaxies around the quasars, but I wasn't really expecting to see a quasar that was clearly offset from the core of a regularly shaped galaxy. "Black holes reside in the center of galaxies, so it's unusual to see a quasar not in the center." The astronomers calculated that the black hole is moving so fast it would travel from Earth to the moon in three minutes. That's fast enough for the black hole to escape the galaxy in 20 million years and roam through the universe forever. Based on this visible evidence, along with theoretical work, the researchers developed a scenario to describe how the behemoth black hole could be expelled from its central home. According to their theory, two galaxies merge, and their black holes settle into the centre of the newly formed elliptical galaxy.

As the black holes whirl around each other, gravity waves are flung out like water from a lawn sprinkler. The hefty objects move closer to each other over time as they radiate away gravitational energy. If the two black holes do not have the same mass and rotation rate, they emit gravitational waves more strongly along one direction. When the two black holes collide, they stop producing gravitational waves.

NASA*ESA*A Feild

This illustration shows how gravitational waves can propel a black hole from the center of a galaxy. The scenario begins in the first panel with the merger of two galaxies, each with a central black hole. In the second panel, the two black holes in the newly merged galaxy settle into the center and begin whirling around each other. This energetic action produces gravitational waves. As the two hefty objects continue to radiate away gravitational energy, they move closer to each other over time, as seen in the third panel. If the black holes do not have the same mass and rotation rate, they emit gravitational waves more strongly in one direction, as shown by the bright area at upper left. The black holes finally merge in the fourth panel, forming one giant black hole. The energy emitted by the merger propels the black hole away from the center in the opposite direction of the strongest gravitational waves.