'Whatever it is, we haven’t seen it before.'
And this supermassive black hole isn't only destroying everything in its path. Based on the Hubble images, it appears the rogue black hole is producing a trail of nascent stars as it passes. You read that right: It may actually beIn fact, this streak of stars is what led to the rogue black hole's discovery in the first place. Because a black hole is invisible, astronomers must observe the matter it surrounds itself with.
"I thought that I'd actually made an error that there was this weird streak in the image," van Dokkum toldWhat remains unclear, though, is what could have forced the rogue black hole out of its original galaxy. The most likely theory, per van Dokkum, involves galactic mergers. When two galaxies merge with each other, typically, so do their supermassive black holes.
But throw a third one into the mix, and all bets are off. Van Dokkum and his team suspect that around 39 million years ago, a third galaxy interfered with the merger, butting one of the supermassive black holes out and turning it rogue. While they note that more research is needed before a definitive conclusion can be reached, the researchers have already spotted a strong clue in the theory's favor: a trail running opposite to the rogue black hole's, which they believe leads to the merging galaxies it was booted from.Dokkum says that the next step will be trawling through old Hubble data to find evidence of similar streaks that may indicate other rogue black holes.
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