The Suspected Runaway Supermassive Black Hole May Not Be What It Appears To Be

The supermassive black hole (SMBH) that created stars out of intergalactic space in its wake after being ejected from its galaxy by two much larger black holes is how the astronomers who discovered the strange structure explain it. A separate team has since suggested that perhaps we are instead witnessing a strange galaxy from an unusual vantage point.

It is without a doubt highly odd that the item Pieter van Dokkum found in the backdrop of the globular clusters he was researching. On the precise strangeness, we are experiencing, though, not all astronomers are in agreement. The original research described a scenario in which an SMBH was blasted from a galaxy merger at such velocities that stars formed after it even from the scant gas between galaxies.

However, a number of unlikely or unusual factors would have to be present for this to happen. In order for other huge objects, like a globular cluster, to pass through the gas the black hole is traveling through without having a comparable impact, the gas the black hole is passing through would specifically need to be near the formation of stars. Nothing like this has ever happened before.

A team from the Instituto de Astrofica de Canarias in Spain looked for an alternate explanation after determining the original hypothesis is highly improbable. In a new publication, they propose that instead of viewing the stars as they are oriented toward us, we shift our viewpoint and think of the universe as being viewed edge-on.

The galaxy would have to be flat and devoid of a bulge in the middle. Although bulge-less galaxies are less frequent than galaxies like our own, there are enough of them to make it easy to trust this section. From our vantage point, galaxies appear to be grouped randomly, because many of them are edge-on to our line of sight. The authors believe that the galaxy would need to be abnormally long given its mass and brightness, but not implausibly so.

Professor Jorge Almeida and the other authors examined photographs of the galaxy IC5249 to see if their theory held true. The newly found object is observed from a comparable angle as IC5249, which also lacks a bulge and contains a similar mass of stars. Additionally, it is hundreds of times closer, allowing us to view considerably more of it in detail.

"When we analyzed the velocities of this distant structure of stars, we realized that they were very similar to those obtained from the rotation of galaxies, so we decided to compare a much closer galaxy and found that they are extraordinarily similar," said co-author Dr. Mirela Montes in a statement.

This scenario nonetheless makes the as-yet-unnamed object fascinating since it is extremely huge for a galaxy we are witnessing so far back in time, even though it is less romantic than a fleeing black hole trailing stars.

Almeida is confident, but future measurements with the JWST and the Chandra X-Ray observatory should determine which interpretation is correct. According to him, "the motions, size, and number of stars fit what has been seen in galaxies within the local universe." Finding the answer to this mystery is a relief; the newly presented scenario is much easier. It is unfortunate in a way since this may have been the first escaping black hole to be discovered, and their presence is predicted. The article may be read online for free in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.