UC Santa Barbara physicists trace runaway black hole to violent merger

A runaway black hole, designated RBH-1, is tracing an extraordinary path through intergalactic space, marked by a 202,000 light-year-long trail extending from its origin. Researchers from UC Santa Barbara and University of Texas at Austin have reconstructed the violent merger that launched this super-massive black hole, providing the first account of a collision predicted by general relativity. The findings, published in Physical Review Letters, detail a scenario where misaligned spins were key to achieving the observed velocity of nearly…