Astronomers are alarmed about having sighted what educated conjecture suggests is the aftermath of a black hole collision of epic proportion at the center of a distant galaxy.

Most often, scientists see supermassive black holes that remain stationary, stuck in place at the cores of other galaxies.This is why astronomers were shocked and elated to discover what they are now terming a "renegade" supermassive black hole hurdling through space according to a new study.

The black hole is about 160 million times the mass of Earth's sun, and researchers believe it is the consequence of a collision with another black hole some 3.9 billion light-years from Earth.

Theory implicates the merger of two galaxies usually involves supermassive black holes orbiting each other despite being at the centers of different galaxies and eventually colliding.The pair of black holes merge possibly to produce a supermassive black hole of exponentially greater mass, but occasionally, this can result in violent recoil, which sends one of the black holes racing in the opposite direction.

They refer to the energy fueling this recoil as gravitational waves.The black holes generate lots of ripples in spacetime like this as they approach each other, and under certain circumstances, a preponderance of gravitational waves can blast outwardly in one direction, ejecting one of them outright.