Do Big Black Holes Explore the Galaxy?

In the astronomical science, black holes have always been the topic of interesting discussion. Many are enticed by it, while some dread the theories that highlight the dangers of the massive black hole in our galaxy. A massive black hole resides at the dead core of the Milky Way. This is the same theory for most of the other galaxies out there. When these black holes might not be munching on stars & gas or flashing out intense, plasma jets, these mysterious formations tend to stay quiet relatively.

However, these black holes, as believed by the scientists do not always tend to stay at the core of the galaxy. When galaxies tend to merge, the stars and gas re-distribute amongst themselves. Moreover, the supermassive black holes of the respective galaxies are able to come across an eviction notice and are usually caught by the gravity of the other galaxies. Over the passage of time, several gravitational encounters are able to send the given black hole towards the center of the particular galaxy.

However, in the recent times, astronomers have increasingly come across the fact that when galaxies tend to merge, the black holes do not always necessarily migrate towards the center of the resulting galaxy. In fact, only a smaller fraction of the merging activities will be ultimately creating closer pairs of centralized black holes. This problem serves to be acutely serious when one of the merging galaxies is considerable smaller (at least less than the 10th in mass) than the other merging partner. The components of the smaller galaxy might take longer than the given age of the universe to make the black hole sink towards the galaxy’s center.

As a result, through implications, the massive, big galaxies could be playing host to several stripped-down galactic cores along with the respective black homes. On the basis of how small the particular black hole is being considered, the astronomers have predicted that there are dozens of them that could lurk at the fringes of the galaxies.

A Complete Lot of Black Holes

Towards better understanding what is exactly going on in the given process, an astronomer named Michael Tremmel along with his colleagues conducted an in-depth observation at how the wandering black holes would be moving across the period of a billion years. The respective team made use of high-powdered Romulus simulation set which was aimed at following the growth & expansion of the cosmic structures in a single cube of some computerized space of around 80 million light-years on the side.

The result of the observation revealed that when two galaxies approached each other in the given simulations, the black hole of the smaller galaxy got caught in the outer reaches of the larger galaxy. However, when it comes to Milky Way, there is nothing to worry. Recent studies have revealed that a middle-sized black hole which is smaller than the ones that have explored here, might be able to keep the central black hole of our galaxy in its place.