Rogue Black Holes are Believed to Be Located in Unexpected Places

Rogue Black Holes are Believed to Be Located in Unexpected Places
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Black holes are certainly cosmic phenomenons that you wouldn’t wish to see anywhere near our planet. In fact, seeing them is also highly improbable, as they do not emit any light. Instead, black holes get noticed in much more terrifying ways.

Luckily enough, there aren’t any black holes wandering near our precious planet. We’re sorry if we’ve disappointed the misanthrope in you. However, rogue black holes are believed to be located in other unexpected locations of the Universe, according to Space.com.

The Milky Way is likely to have an average of 12 rogue supermassive black holes at its edges

The “12 rogue supermassive black holes” rule even applies to other galaxies similar to our own Milky Way.
A supermassive black hole is believed to be located at the center of most galaxies. Milky Way has one too. The cosmic beasts are supporting the huge amount of dust, gas, stars and planets that will orbit around them. Therefore, black holes are far from having only a destructive role in the Cosmos!

But you know what they say that there’s no such thing as perfection. Due to a cataclysmic cosmic event such as a collision between two galaxies or disruption between two merging black holes, a supermassive black hole can be ejected from the galactic center and become rogue.

Scientists tried to estimate how often such scenarios can occur by running some simulations called Romulus. Oddly or not, the conclusion was that the frequent galactic collisions in the first 2 billion years after the Big Bang produced enough cosmic wanderers for outnumbering and even outshining the supermassive black holes that followed the standard model of being located in the cores of galaxies.

The researchers wrote, as quoted by Space.com:

Romulus predicts that many supermassive black hole binaries form after several billions of years of orbital evolution, while some SMBHs [supermassive black holes] will never make it to the center,

As a result, Milky Way-mass galaxies in Romulus are found to host an average of 12 supermassive black holes, which typically wander the halo far from the galactic center.

There you have it, just in case you needed to know about other places to look for rogue supermassive black holes.


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Even since he was a child, Cristian was staring curiously at the stars, wondering about the Universe and our place in it. Today he's seeing his dream come true by writing about the latest news in astronomy. Cristian is also glad to be covering health and other science topics, having significant experience in writing about such fields.

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