A huge black hole is hurtling through space, leaving behind a trail of newborn stars 200,000 light-years across, according to US space scientists.
The gigantic monster, probably born from a strange interaction of intergalactic masses and with a mass 20 million times that of our Sun, makes its way through the darkness and the gas clouds that it finds in its path.
The incredible forces at play turn this gas into a trail of new stars, which have been captured by the cameras of NASA’s powerful Hubble Space Telescope.
“We think that what we see is a trail behind the black hole where the gas cools and is capable of forming stars,” explained Pieter van Dokkum, an expert at Yale University.
“What we see are the aftermath. Like the wake behind a ship, what we see is the wake behind the black hole,” he said.
According to the researchers, the gas is probably ejected and heated by the movement of the black hole.
“The gas ahead is shocked by the high-velocity, supersonic impact of the black hole moving through this gas,” van Dokkum said.
Scientists believe that he began his journey after being ejected from a celestial “menage-a-trois.”
The theory that is used is that, probably, two galaxies merged 50 million years ago and united two gigantic black holes that rotated harmoniously around each other.
But a third galaxy collided with its own black hole, creating an unstable and chaotic trio that eventually ejected one of them at speeds high enough to travel between Earth and the Moon in just 14 minutes.
Astronomers say there is no reason to worry on Earth because this happened so far away, and a long time ago, when the universe was half its present age. It’s visible now because of the time it took light to get here.
The runaway black hole, which had never been seen before, was discovered by accident, van Dokkum said.
“I was scanning the Hubble image and noticed that there was a little streak.”he clarified.
“It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” he said. The star trail is “quite amazing, very, very bright, and very unusual.”
This is the first black hole with a trail of stars to be sighted, but NASA cautions that it’s not necessarily the only one.
Its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch this decade, should give astronomers a broader view of the universe, and could lead to the discovery of more events like this.