A rare and strange cosmic event involving three huge black holes has actually led to the discovery of an extraordinary phenomenon: a supermassive black hole moving at incredible speeds, leaving a 200,000-light-year-long path of newborn stars in its wake. Caught mistakenly by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope, this extraordinary contrail of star formation is the outcome of the black hole barreling through intergalactic area and activating new star formation as it affects gas ahead of it. Scientists think gas is probably being shocked and warmed from the movement of the black hole striking the gas, or it might be radiation from an accretion disk around the black hole. One of the black holes robbed momentum from the other two black holes and got tossed out of the host galaxy. When the single black hole took off in one direction, the binary black holes shot off in the opposite instructions.
” We think were seeing a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and has the ability to form stars. Were looking at star formation routing the black hole,” stated Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “What were seeing is the after-effects. Like the wake behind a ship were seeing the wake behind the black hole.” The path must have great deals of new stars, offered that it is almost half as intense as the host galaxy it is linked to.
A unusual and unusual cosmic occasion including 3 enormous great voids has led to the discovery of an unmatched phenomenon: a supermassive great void moving at incredible speeds, leaving a 200,000-light-year-long trail of newborn stars in its wake. Caught mistakenly by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope, this amazing contrail of star formation is the result of the great void barreling through intergalactic area and triggering new star development as it impacts gas ahead of it. The event, referred to as a video game of galactic billiards, is most likely the outcome of numerous accidents among supermassive black holes, leaving astronomers eager to investigate even more with the James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
A Bizarre 200,000-Light-Year-Long Bridge Links a Galaxy to Its Escaping Black Hole
Thats what occurred to Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum when he was looking through Hubble Space Telescope images and observed a presumed acne that looked like a scratch on photographic film. As soon as spectroscopy was done on the oddball streak van Dokkum recognized it was actually a 200,000-light-year-long chain of young blue stars located over midway throughout the universe! The black hole should be compressing gas along its wake, which condenses to form stars.
This is an artists impression of a runaway supermassive black hole that was ejected from its host galaxy as a result of a tussle between it and 2 other black holes. As the black hole rakes through intergalactic area it compresses rare gas in front to it.
Hubble Space Telescope Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars.
Theres an unnoticeable monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic area so quick that if it remained 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, two times the size of our Milky Way galaxy. Its likely the result of an unusual, strange game of stellar billiards amongst three enormous great voids.
Instead of demolishing stars ahead of it, like a cosmic Pac-Man, the fast great void is raking into gas in front of it to set off new star formation along a narrow passage. The great void is streaking too quick to require time for a treat. Nothing like it has ever been seen prior to, but it was captured inadvertently by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope.
Researchers believe gas is probably being shocked and heated from the movement of the black hole hitting the gas, or it might be radiation from an accretion disk around the black hole. “Gas in front of it gets stunned due to the fact that of this supersonic, very high-velocity impact of the black hole moving through the gas.
” This is pure serendipity that we came across it,” van Dokkum included. He was trying to find globular star clusters in a neighboring dwarf galaxy. “I was simply scanning through the Hubble image and then I saw that we have a little streak. I right away believed, oh, a cosmic ray hitting the video camera detector and triggering a linear imaging artifact. When we removed cosmic rays we realized it was still there. It didnt look like anything weve seen prior to.”.
This Hubble Space Telescope archival image captures a curious linear function that is so unusual it was very first dismissed as an imaging artifact from Hubbles cameras. But follow-up spectroscopic observations reveal it is a 200,000-light-year-long chain of young blue stars. A supermassive great void lies at the tip of the bridge at lower left. The black hole was ejected from the galaxy at upper. It compressed gas in its wake to leave a long trail of young blue stars. Absolutely nothing like this has ever been seen before in deep space. This uncommon occasion occurred when deep space was around half its existing age. Credit: Science: NASA, ESA, Pieter van Dokkum (Yale), Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI).
Van Dokkum and his group did follow-up spectroscopy with the W. M. Keck Observatories in Hawaii because it was so unusual. He describes the star path as “rather impressive, extremely, really intense and extremely uncommon.” This caused the conclusion that he was looking at the consequences of a great void flying through a halo of gas surrounding the host galaxy.
This intergalactic skyrocket is likely the result of numerous crashes of supermassive great voids. Astronomers suspect the first two galaxies merged possibly 50 million years back. That brought together 2 supermassive black holes at their. They whirled around each other as a binary black hole.
Another galaxy came along with its own supermassive black hole. One of the black holes robbed momentum from the other 2 black holes and got tossed out of the host galaxy.
When the single black hole took off in one direction, the binary black holes shot off in the opposite instructions. The next step is to do follow-up observations with NASAs James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to validate the black hole explanation.
NASAs upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a wide-angle view of deep space with Hubbles beautiful resolution. As a study telescope, the Roman observations may find more of these improbable and rare “star streaks” somewhere else in the universe. This may need artificial intelligence utilizing algorithms that are great at discovering specific strange shapes in a sea of other astronomical data, according to van Dokkum..
The term paper was released on April 6 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Referral: “A Candidate Runaway Supermassive Black Hole Identified by Shocks and Star Formation in its Wake” by Pieter van Dokkum, Imad Pasha, Maria Luisa Buzzo, Stephanie LaMassa, Zili Shen, Michael A. Keim, Roberto Abraham, Charlie Conroy, Shany Danieli, Kaustav Mitra, Daisuke Nagai, Priyamvada Natarajan, Aaron J. Romanowsky, Grant Tremblay, C. Megan Urry and Frank C. van den Bosch, 6 April 2023, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.DOI: 10.3847/ 2041-8213/ acba86.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a task of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, handles the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is run for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
