A “supermassive” black hole is hurtling through space, leaving behind a trail of stars 200,000 light-years long, according to a groundbreaking discovery announced by NASA.
This enormous monster, whose mass is equivalent to 20 million times that of our sun, is unleashed in the interstellar vacuum and pummels the gas clouds in its path.
Transformation into a star trail
Given the excessive forces at play, this gas becomes a trail of stars, which were detected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
“We think we see a trail behind the black hole where gas cools and can form stars,” Yale University scientist Pieter van Dokkum said in a statement. “What we see are the aftermath. Like the wake of a ship, we see the wake of the black hole.”
The researchers believe that the gas likely heats up from the collision with the black hole, then cools after it passes, giving rise to the stars seen in its path.
“The gas in front of it is hit by the supersonic impact, at very high speed, from the black hole,” according to Pieter van Dokkum.
Scientists believe that the celestial beast came from a colossal interstellar trio.
According to his theory, two galaxies probably merged around 50 million years ago, causing two supermassive black holes to orbit each other.
An accident
But a third galaxy, with its own black hole, would then have collided with this set. Enough to create an unstable and chaotic trio, which ended up ejecting one of the black holes at phenomenal speed: the monster spotted by Hubble could cover the distance between the Earth and the Moon in just 14 minutes.
For us, poor humans, there is no risk of being swallowed by this huge celestial object, according to the researchers responsible for this discovery. All of this happened in space and a long time ago, when the universe was half its present age.
We see this phenomenon today because light took a long time to reach us.
This discovery was made by accident, according to Pieter van Dokkum.
Using the Hubble telescope, the scientist “observed (…) a small trail” of stars, “quite surprising, very, very bright and very unusual.” “It was unlike anything we had seen before.”
Never before observed, this type of black hole may not be alone in the universe, according to NASA.
The new Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, scheduled for launch this decade, should provide a much broader view of space and could detect more star trails that indicate the presence of one of these colossi.
Source: BFM TV
