Speedy Black Hole in Intergalactic Space Could be Creating a Trail of Stars (nasa.gov) 46
"There's an invisible monster on the loose," NASA wrote on Thursday, "barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. "
This supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000-light-year-long "contrail" of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy... Rather than gobbling up stars ahead of it, like a cosmic Pac-Man, the speedy black hole is plowing into gas in front of it to trigger new star formation along a narrow corridor. The black hole is streaking too fast to take time for a snack. Nothing like it has ever been seen before, but it was captured accidentally by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. "We think we're seeing a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and is able to form stars. So, we're looking at star formation trailing the black hole," said Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut...
The trail must have lots of new stars, given that it is almost half as bright as the host galaxy it is linked to... Researchers believe gas is probably being shocked and heated from the motion of the black hole hitting the gas, or it could be radiation from an accretion disk around the black hole... Because it was so weird, van Dokkum and his team did follow-up spectroscopy with the W. M. Keck Observatories in Hawaii. He describes the star trail as "quite astonishing, very, very bright and very unusual." This led to the conclusion that he was looking at the aftermath of a black hole flying through a halo of gas surrounding the host galaxy.
This intergalactic skyrocket is likely the result of multiple collisions of supermassive black holes. Astronomers suspect the first two galaxies merged perhaps 50 million years ago. That brought together two supermassive black holes at their centers. They whirled around each other as a binary black hole. Then another galaxy came along with its own supermassive black hole. This follows the old idiom: "two's company and three's a crowd." The three black holes mixing it up led to a chaotic and unstable configuration. One of the black holes robbed momentum from the other two black holes and got thrown out of the host galaxy.
The trail must have lots of new stars, given that it is almost half as bright as the host galaxy it is linked to... Researchers believe gas is probably being shocked and heated from the motion of the black hole hitting the gas, or it could be radiation from an accretion disk around the black hole... Because it was so weird, van Dokkum and his team did follow-up spectroscopy with the W. M. Keck Observatories in Hawaii. He describes the star trail as "quite astonishing, very, very bright and very unusual." This led to the conclusion that he was looking at the aftermath of a black hole flying through a halo of gas surrounding the host galaxy.
This intergalactic skyrocket is likely the result of multiple collisions of supermassive black holes. Astronomers suspect the first two galaxies merged perhaps 50 million years ago. That brought together two supermassive black holes at their centers. They whirled around each other as a binary black hole. Then another galaxy came along with its own supermassive black hole. This follows the old idiom: "two's company and three's a crowd." The three black holes mixing it up led to a chaotic and unstable configuration. One of the black holes robbed momentum from the other two black holes and got thrown out of the host galaxy.
newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way (Score:2)
Them r some mity big stars!
Two's company and three's a crowd (Score:2)
I'm glad the story is sticking to scientific explanations of events.
Intergallactic goat or Vogan highway? (Score:2)
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> assuming black holes have mass
Have black holes _ever_ been theorized to NOT have mass!? Their very measure is (AFAICT) always been in units of our sun's mass.
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Re: Two's company and three's a crowd (Score:3)
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...wait until the chemtrail nutters hear about this. Supermassive black holes whizzing through space leaving giant tube shaped galaxy trails behind them. Who's going to clean all that up?
Nerds be mad.
Re: Two's company and three's a crowd (Score:3)
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Can science be inferred? What I picked up is that three SMBHs came into close proximity and one was spat out in a supermega gravity assist.
And the binary pair of black holes was bespat in the opposite direction, thus de-holing the host galaxies.
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In orbital systems, the phrase does fit.
The orbit of two bodies can be solved analytically. However, in almost all cases with three or more bodies the system's behavior is chaotic over the long term, and the eventual ejection of one or more of them can't be ruled out.
Re: Two's company and three's a crowd (Score:2)
What if? (Score:1)
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50 million years (Score:2)
Bring it on my 2500000E th
Grandchild will be ready
Puffer Train (Score:4, Funny)
Someone's playing a super-sized version of Conway's Game of Life.
Wikipedia: Puffer train [wikipedia.org]
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Someone's playing a super-sized version of Conway's Game of Life.
Wikipedia: Puffer train [wikipedia.org]
Puffer trains have an entirely different definition in my area.
What I find interesting (Score:2)
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If black holes create the universe then where did the first black hole come from?
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The whole mass of the universe stuffed into one point sounds pretty blackholey to me.
Re: What I find interesting (Score:2)
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From the big bang? In case you "believe" in that idea?
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Re: What I find interesting (Score:2)
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If black holes create the universe then where did the first black hole come from?
A turtle.
The black hole is cheating (Score:2)
it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes
Yeah, that's because it bends spacetime so hard it'll be 14 minutes for Matthew McConaughey, but like 20 years for us sucker observers on Earth.
I know cuz I watched Interstellar.
My God!! (Score:3)
Well then (Score:3)
Astronomers suspect the first two galaxies merged perhaps 50 million years ago. That brought together two supermassive black holes at their centers. They whirled around each other as a binary black hole. Then another galaxy came along with its own supermassive black hole. This follows the old idiom: "two's company and three's a crowd." The three black holes mixing it up led to a chaotic and unstable configuration. One of the black holes robbed momentum from the other two black holes and got thrown out of the host galaxy.
Well then ... I'm so glad we've moved on from mythology, where people just made up stories to explain things, lol
A cloud is not a distance measurement... (Score:1)
At least they checked wikipedia, but the diameter of the milkyway is far from defined. Below is an article saying the diameter is 1.9 billion light years. It is kinda like picking an orbiting planet, no wait a dwarf planet, no wait the kuiper belt, no wait the Ort cloud, no wait the termination shock, etc... to define the solar system.
https://bgr.com/science/milky-... [bgr.com]
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If you found an article saying the diameter of the Milky Way is 1.9 billion light years you should probably look for a more reputable source of articles.
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They misspelled "million", but still. The research suggests a vast halo of dark matter surrounds the visible part of the Milky Way -> https://www.sciencenews.org/ar... [sciencenews.org]
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Hey, this thread is about pedantic criticism of rough journalistic size comparisons. Screwing up "million" and "billion" is a few orders of magnitude more serious problem.
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Also, your link contradicts the OP's actual point:
Strange times (Score:5, Funny)
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...shitting stars like a bunny rabbit.
Thanks ever so much for the wonderful first-thing-in-the-morning mental image. You should use that phrase as your sig.
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First thought that came to my mind, "It's pooping stars!"
Stars (Score:2)
In intergalactic space, a speeding hole
Does trail behind a stream of glittering light
A dance of stars, a spectacle to behold
As blackness swallows all within its sight
With speed that's almost too fast to conceive
This mighty force does carve a path through space
Creating stars, as if it does believe
That beauty comes from chaos, in this race
Oh, wondrous sight, a marvel to behold
As stars are born from cosmic catastrophe
A tale of speed and power, yet untold
A grand display of nature's majesty
The black hole speeds
Do things really "barrel" in space? (Score:2)
Wouldn't they actually careen instead of barrel? I have the same issue with every movie on Lifetime being "ripped from the headlines".
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Nope, definitely barrel. Barreling implies a straight line, which is what this is taking. Careening is more of a curvy or changing path, implying bouncing off obstructions and changing course. Which is not what is happening here.