Supermassive black holes usually stay put in the middle of large galaxies, but at least one has gone rogue.
It's 10 million times bigger than the Sun, burns rubber through empty space at about 3,000 times the speed of sound, and leaves a trail of baby stars wherever it goes. And until now, it was purely theoretical.
According to Space.com, a team of researchers led by Yale University's Pieter van Dokkum first identified the runaway black hole in 2023 with the Hubble Space Telescope, and confirmed it in 2025 with data from the James T. Webb Space Telescope. While Hubble images spotted the accumulated gas and star formation that the black hole left in its wake, the Webb telescope visualized the displaced gases and shock waves around the black hole itself — crystal-clear proof to support the discovery team's hypothesis.
And the supermassive black hole isn't just fast — it's the fastest thing in the universe except for light itself, thanks to the long-ago galactic collision that dislodged it from its original home. What became of those galaxies, and how many black holes were involved in that stellar crash, is another mystery that van Dokkum believes can be solved with hard work, brains, and more images from the most advanced telescopes ever invented. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, slated to launch in 2027, is a perfect tool for the job.