A supermassive black hole flying through space has left behind a trail of newborn stars twice as long as the Milky Way — a phenomenon researchers say they have never seen until now.
Researchers detailed the discovery, caught accidentally by the Hubble Space Telescope and announced on April 6, in a research paper published inThey say the trail of newborn stars is 200,000 light years long, while the runaway black hole weighs as much as 20 million suns and is traveling so fast it could get from the Earth to the moon in 14 minutes.
"I immediately thought, 'Oh, a cosmic ray hitting the camera detector and causing a linear imaging artifact.' When we eliminated cosmic rays, we realized it was still there. It didn't look like anything we've seen before." "We think we're seeing a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and is able to form stars. So, we're looking at star formation trailing the black hole," van Dokkum said.
As for how the black hole managed to travel at such a high speed, the researchers say it could be the result of three supermassive black holes colliding with each other.
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