Astronomers clock runaway black hole leaving trail of fresh stars A runaway supermassive black hole is speeding through space and creating a trail of stars behind it, a phenomenon accidentally discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope. The rogue object, estimated to be 20 million times more massive than the Sun, is believed to have been forcefully kicked from its host galaxy after it came …
With the big rogue object we can see what happened.
However, what would happen if a (very much) smaller rogue object would walk the earth. Would you also be able to detect a tail of creation in its wake(*)?
(*) Creation will be arguably destructive if the rogue object is identified as human.
Anyhow, nice pictures. Space is awesome.
"After spotting the lone supermassive black hole, they were surprised to see it had left a trail of bright new stars in its wake. It's possible that interstellar gas is being shocked and heated as the black hole travels through it, triggering the material to collapse and form fresh stars."
Or?
It is sucking stuff closer to itself at a rate that causes the stuff to reach a density so it can coalesce and make stars but it is going fast enough so it leaves enough in its wake to make those stars.
This is why folks like you read El Reg. The insight commentards provide is way above the "shocked and heated" drivel Astrophysicists make up.
But shocked hydrogen will seek out other hydrogen. Anyone shocked would want to partner up to get comfortable again. And when partners get comfortably together, you know they are going to heat up. Before you know it they give birth to helium, lithium, beryllium, boron and cycle through carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.
Multiply that by the size of the universe and the time of eternity and you get bright stars. See, it is that easy. All this is the result of the love coming from hydrogen getting shocked. All the way loved until explosions of gold and brightly pulsing uranium.
Yep and like many discoveries, it all started off with a "huh, that's odd, can't be right".
But, it also was predicted to occur, just wasn't observed in the universe until now. Supermassive black holes don't usually collide, they more frequently will eject an interloper from both colliding galaxies and one prediction was stellar creation in the ejected SMBH wake.
...Supermassive black holes don't usually collide...
Not sure about that, how do you think they grew to supermassive size in the first place, the universe is not old enough for them to grow only by accretion, mergers are (probably) the only way for them to grow that big.
"and immediately realized they had stumbled on something unique when they looked closer."
Just how did they determine that it was "one of a kind" in the entire Universe?
"Now, the team is on a lookout to find more of these newborn star streaks in space."
If it's unique, there's no point in looking for more.
Black holes get a bad rap. They suck no more than an uncollapsed object of the same mass, you can safely orbit a black hole just like any other massive object and you won't get pulled in unless you pass the event horizon, the difference for back holes is the event horizon is external while objects made of uncollapsed mass have an event horizon that is internal so can never be reached. Even a single atom has an event horizon but it is deep in the nucleus, the event horizon (Schwarzschild) radius is calculated as r = 2GM/c² (where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the object and obviously c is the SoL).
There is a region called the Innermost Stable Circular Orbit which as the name suggests is the closest escapable orbit to the event horizon. It is not easy for an object to fall in just like it takes a lot of energy to send a spaceship to the sun. To get from ISCO to the event horizon an object needs a kick like a collision which sends one object in and ejects the other - this is part of the reason why some black holes are amongst the brightest objects in the universe. Of course an object aimed at the middle will go straight in but anything coming in at an angle will either be deflected or get caught in an orbit.
What becomes of matter once it's entered a black hole is by definition unknowable but it's a fair guess it's not dissimilar to a neutron star but far, far worse.
> while objects made of uncollapsed mass have an event horizon that is internal so can never be reached
Not really true. One could tunnel down below your hypothetical event horizon and still come out with a finite amount of energy, so not really an event horizon. Neutrinos pass through the centre of the earth without being trapped by gravitational forces. If the earth was compressed into a black hole it would trap neutrinos.
> ...no idea what would happen if one [neutrino] hit the exact point
Nothing would happen.
If a neutrino arrived at the centre (of mass) of the Earth, then as it speeds past the very centre there is no net gravitational force on it from the Earth at all. None. The gravitational acceleration due to all the various bits of the Earth exactly balances out to zero at that point, not to infinity.
The neutrino still feels the effect of the Sun, Jupiter etc, but it's a neutrino and it's got places to go...
Quote: "....to become a binary object 50 million years ago...."
The Sun (no pun intended) is interested in scantily clad young women -- photographed 24 hours ago on the beach in Brighton!!
.....but 50 million year old news.....from a location billions of miles away......I don't think so!
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