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Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars
There's an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through
intergalactic space so fast that if it were 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, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy.
It's likely the result of a rare, bizarre game of galactic billiards
among three massive black holes.
Rather than gobbling up stars ahead of it, like a cosmic Pac-Man, the
speedy black hole is plowing into gas in front of it to trigger new star
formation along a narrow corridor.
The black hole is streaking too fast to take time for a snack. Nothing
like it has ever been seen before.
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