01-07-2021, 05:38 PM
https://news.sky.com/story/missing-super...y-12180505
Scientists are baffled by a missing supermassive black hole which should by normal expectations sit in the centre of a distant galaxy.
Instead, according to researchers at a handful of North American universities, there appears to be something highly unusual about the bright cluster galaxy A2261-BCG.
They believe it is the first ever example of a so-called "recoiling" black hole - a black hole that was ejected from the centre of the galaxy by a powerful force, and is now mysteriously floating through space.
The nature of these black holes has been described in a study which will be published by the American Astronomical Society journal, led by Dr Kayhan Gultekin at the University of Michigan.
Dr Gultekin studied A2261-BCG, located about 2.6 billion light years from Earth, as it has a large and flat stellar core, as revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope, making it a potential candidate for a galaxy with a missing black hole.
Well, this is weird . You think of black holes as being immovable objects that suck up everything in their path - but, ultimately, they have finite mass and are subject to the same laws of physics as anything else - so, they can be moved (or thrown out of a galaxy) by a sufficiently strong force .
I wonder what caused this one, though?
Scientists are baffled by a missing supermassive black hole which should by normal expectations sit in the centre of a distant galaxy.
Instead, according to researchers at a handful of North American universities, there appears to be something highly unusual about the bright cluster galaxy A2261-BCG.
They believe it is the first ever example of a so-called "recoiling" black hole - a black hole that was ejected from the centre of the galaxy by a powerful force, and is now mysteriously floating through space.
The nature of these black holes has been described in a study which will be published by the American Astronomical Society journal, led by Dr Kayhan Gultekin at the University of Michigan.
Dr Gultekin studied A2261-BCG, located about 2.6 billion light years from Earth, as it has a large and flat stellar core, as revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope, making it a potential candidate for a galaxy with a missing black hole.
Well, this is weird . You think of black holes as being immovable objects that suck up everything in their path - but, ultimately, they have finite mass and are subject to the same laws of physics as anything else - so, they can be moved (or thrown out of a galaxy) by a sufficiently strong force .
I wonder what caused this one, though?
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