HEIC: Supermassive Black Hole Kicked Out of Galactic Core

[bystander]

Supermassive Black Hole Kicked Out of Galactic Core
ESA Hubble Science Release | 2017 Mar 23

Astronomers suspect gravitational waves

[img3="Hubble image of quasar 3C 186 offset from the center of its galaxy.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Chiaberge (STScI/ESA)"]https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives ... c1706a.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

An international team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered a supermassive black hole that has been propelled out of the centre of the distant galaxy 3C186. The black hole was most likely ejected by the power of gravitational waves. This is the first time that astronomers found a supermassive black hole at such a large distance from its host galaxy centre.

Though several other suspected runaway black holes have been seen elsewhere, none has so far been confirmed. Now astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have detected a supermassive black hole, with a mass of one billion times the Sun’s, being kicked out of its parent galaxy. ...

The images taken by Hubble provided the first clue that the galaxy, named 3C186, was unusual. The images of the galaxy, located 8 billion light-years away, revealed a bright quasar, the energetic signature of an active black hole, located far from the galactic core. ...

The team calculated that the black hole has already travelled about 35 000 light-years from the centre, which is more than the distance between the Sun and the centre of the Milky Way. And it continues its flight at a speed of 7.5 million kilometres per hour [1]. At this speed the black hole could travel from Earth to the Moon in three minutes. ...

Gravitational Wave Kicks Monster Black Hole Out of Galactic Core
NASA | STScI | HubbleSite | 2017 Mar 23

The Puzzling Case of the Radio-Loud QSO 3C 186:
A Gravitational Wave Recoiling Black Hole in a Young Radio Source? - M. Chiaberge et al

• Astronomy & Astrophysics (accepted 19 Jan 2017) DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201629522
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1611.05501 > 16 Nov 2016 (v1), 18 Nov 2016 (v2)

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=21749

[BDanielMayfield]

This runaway SMBH at 1 billion sun makes the Milky Way's 4.3 million sun massed SMBH look wimpy. (Oh no, now ours could be reclassified as a Dwarf SMBH )

The speed of 7.5 million km/hr is 2083 km/s. Its speed would have been even greater when it was first given its "kick" at the start of its 35,000 ly path.

This clearly demonstrates that high velocity black holes are a real thing.

Bruce

[Ann]

Gravitational wave kicks monster black hole out of galactic core

Astronomy Now wrote:
Researchers estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovae exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole. The most plausible explanation for this propulsive energy is that the monster object was given a kick by gravitational waves unleashed by the merger of two hefty black holes at the center of the host galaxy.

Ann

[BDanielMayfield]

Gravitational wave kicks monster black hole out of galactic core

Astronomy Now wrote:
Researchers estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovae exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole. The most plausible explanation for this propulsive energy is that the monster object was given a kick by gravitational waves unleashed by the merger of two hefty black holes at the center of the host galaxy.

Ann

I came across that same info from another source when I was thinking about what I would write in my previous post. I wondered, a wave did this? Wouldn't most of the wave's energy have propagated elsewhere? But seeing that the cause of the kick was a SMBH merger event I guess this energy is mostly carried away by the exiting SMBH.

Well now, we have a natural way for a merged galaxy to jettison the remains of its pesky pair of central black holes. Think of what this means for galactic habitability. Sure, it's bad news for star systems near the path of the exiting monster, but it improves the neighborhood for most stars in the newly merged galaxy

[Ann]

Bystander's source was better than mine.

ESA/Hubble wrote:
Although other scenarios to explain the observations cannot be excluded, the most plausible source of the propulsive energy is that this supermassive black hole was given a kick by gravitational waves [2] unleashed by the merger of two massive black holes at the centre of its host galaxy. This theory is supported by arc-shaped tidal tails identified by the scientists, produced by a gravitational tug between two colliding galaxies.

According to the theory presented by the scientists, 1-2 billion years ago two galaxies — each with central, massive black holes — merged. The black holes whirled around each other at the centre of the newly-formed elliptical galaxy, creating gravitational waves that were flung out like water from a lawn sprinkler [3]. As the two black holes did not have the same mass and rotation rate, they emitted gravitational waves more strongly along one direction. When the two black holes finally merged, the anisotropic emission of gravitational waves generated a kick that shot the resulting black hole out of the galactic centre.

I find this quite amazing, which does not mean I think it is implausible. But just imagine one smallish supermassive black hole and one big supermassive black hole orbiting one another and creating such off-center gravitational waves that the merger product, the even bigger supermassive black hole, got kicked out of the galaxy altogether by the gravitational waves of its progenitors' own making.

Ann