What is the speed of a black hole?
David Mccullough
Published Jan 21, 2026
A supermassive black hole is racing across the universe at 110,000 mph (177,000 km/h), and the astronomers who spotted it don't know why. The fast-moving black hole, which is roughly 3 million times heavier than our sun, is zipping through the center of the galaxy J0437+2456, about 230 million light-years away.
supermassive black hole
A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun ( M ☉).
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Is a black hole faster than light?
Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have seen that the famous giant black hole in Messier 87 is propelling particles at speeds greater than 99% of the speed of light.How fast do black holes outrun?
Escaping a black hole's gripAs one moves closer to the black hole, the escape velocity — the speed needed to escape the black hole's gravity — goes up. At a certain point, escape velocity is greater than the speed of light, or 186,282 miles/second (299,792 kilometers/second).