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Astronomers Spot a Rogue Supermassive Black Hole Hurtling Through Space

dimanche 19 février 2023, 17:34 , par Slashdot
'Astronomers spotted an unexpected trail in the gas surrounding a dwarf galaxy while using the Hubble Space Telescope....' writes Hot Hardware. 'The light emitting from the trail traveled more than 7.5 billion years to reach Earth and is thought to be traveling at a breakneck speed of 1,600km/s (3.5 million mph).

Science Alert says it could be 'the smoking gun pointing to a runaway supermassive black hole.'

More from Universe Today:

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) lurk in the center of large galaxies like ours. From their commanding position in the galaxy's heart, they feed on gas, dust, stars, and anything else that strays too close, growing more massive as time passes. But in rare circumstances, an SMBH can be forced out of its position and hurtle through space as a rogue SMBH.

In a new paper, researchers from Canada, Australia, and the USA present evidence of a rogue SMBH that's tearing through space and interacting with the circumgalactic medium (CGM.) Along the way, the giant is creating shock waves and triggering star formation.... The paper hasn't been peer-reviewed yet....

In their paper, the authors explain how an SMBH can be cast out of its host galaxy. It always starts when galaxies merge. That leads to the formation of a binary SMBH at the center of the merger remnant. The binary SMBH can be very long-lived, surviving for as long as one billion years before merging. If during that time, a third SMBH reaches the galactic center, then a three-body interaction can give one of the SMBHs a velocity boost, and it can be driven from the galaxy.

Hot Hardware adds that 'This is not the first time a supermassive black hole has been found ejected from the center of its host galaxy. However, this is the first time one has been detected speeding across intergalactic space and believed to be inactive.'

And RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) explains that 'After the collision and ejection from the galaxy core, the passage of the black hole through the galaxy and it's surrounding material produced a burst of star formation along that line, which we now see as a faint linear streak of light....

'Those who like doom-laden prophecies will be upset to hear that, because we can see this moving across the plane of the sky, it is never going to come any where near us.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/02/18/2334227/astronomers-spot-a-rogue-supermassive-black-hole...
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