the black hole is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized “bow-shock” of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it, within which gas is accumulating and triggering star formation.
The fuck.
Edit: Great article! Well worth a read.
“Runaway Black Hole” is a horrifying thought I never had until now.
There’s…an almost disturbing amount of regular runaways in our own galaxy too. I think that was a fairly recent Webb discovery as well.
I’m glad everything is so far apart sometimes.
A runaway supermassive is even moreso.
Like, what the absolute fuck could have happened to give the core of a galaxy that much velocity?
I’d assume two galaxies merged, and the black hole from one got a gravitational slingshot from the other. The result of that passing near, or through, another galaxy would be fascinating to study. From a very, very, long way away.
We’re assuming the black hole is moving, when we could be the ones moving and it is stationary. Movement is relative, and we always assume it from our own perspective.
But if it’s stationary and we’re moving at 2.2m mph…
Yeah, even scarier. =D
Just imagine this thing barreling towards you at almost 1% of c
