Supermassive Black Hole is on a collision route with the Milky Way

One black hole with 600 thousand solar masses may be traveling on a collision route with the Milky Way at a speed of approximately 300 thousand km/s. The most curious thing is that he is hidden in a place where he theoretically should not be: in the depths of a dwarf galaxy.

The discovery was made indirectly by galactic archaeologists who were reviewing the 21 -star -sequence -sequence -hiperible trajectories of type B (hot and young) that would have been ejected from the Galactic Center by A process called Hills Mechanism .

This process of astrophysics explains how stars of a binary system can be expelled to space when one is captured by a supermassive black hole, such as Sagittarius A*, which is in the center of our galaxy.

At the same moment this happens, the star released from binary interaction receives a kind of gravitational kick. Ejected at very high speed, it often surpasses the galaxy’s exhaust speed, and ends in the intergalactic space.

Between 2005 and 2014, the survey of hypervelous stars HVS Survey, performed by astronomers of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, found 21 of these stars ejected in the outer halo of the Milky Way.

Now, a recent study in the arxiv pre-impressions repositoryhe revealed that about half of these hypervelous stars identified in the research did not come from the center of the Milky Way, as thought, but from the great cloud of Magalhães (LMC in English), one of his satellite galaxies.

Is there really a supermassive black hole in a dwarf galaxy?

To test this hypothesis, the authors created a model simulating stars ejected by a supermassive black hole in the LMC. The spatial and kinematics forecasts of these hypervelous stars coincided with the observations made.

Even knowing that supernovae explosions and gravitational interactions can eject stars, the team ensures that “the birth rate and grouping of hypervelozes stars in the LMC can only be explained by the presence of a supermassive black hole ”.

A crucial indication for the existence of a black hole in the LMC is the so -called lion superdensity, a region towards this constellation, with more stars than expected. The researchers’ model also reproduced this concentration of stars, reinforcing theory.

Thus, the study suggests that a supermassive black hole, with a mass of 600 thousand suns in the LMC, would be ejecting stars to the Milky Way. Some of them become hyperible, others just increase the overdone.

If confirmed, this supermassive black hole would change our understanding of LMC and its dynamics. It would not only influence the dwarf galaxy itself, but could also have impacts on the structure of the Milky Way.

A new way to detect black holes

Detecting black holes has always been a kind of mission impossible for astronomers, because when they are not actively absorbing matter (pulling gas, dust or even stars to their event horizon), they do not emit any kind of visible radiation.

One of the forms found by scientists to locate these invisible cosmic giants was to analyze the strange movement of nearby stars. It was in measuring unusual orbits that confirmed the existence of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way.

In the current study, the authors created an unprecedented way to track black holes. They focused on another type of stellar anomaly: the hypervelous stars, objects that travel ten times faster (1,000 km/s) than their mite colleagues.

Led by astrophysicist Jiwon Jesse Han of Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, The research proposes that following hypervelous stars leads us to hidden black holes .

In this case, the “gravitational kick” is the well -known Hills mechanism, an interaction of three bodies between a black hole and two stars. One of the three members is violently ejected, becoming a hyperveloz star.

Using Gaia space telescope data, the authors accurately tracked 16 stars. Seven of them originated near Sagittarius A*, in the center of our Milky Way, but the other nine seem to have come from the great cloud of Magalhães.

When the two galaxies merge, the alleged supermassive hole of the LMC will move to the center of the Milky Way and, after billion years, will merge with the SGR A* (which has mass equivalent to 4.3 million suns), forming an even larger black hole.

When this event finally happens, will there be any form of life to witness it?

See also: NASA Astronauts return to Earth after 9 months

This content was originally published in a supermassive black hole is on a collision route with the Milky Way on the CNN Brazil website.

Source: CNN Brasil