Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are usually found at the center of galaxies, playing a huge role in the existence of those stellar conglomerates. It’s also the case of our Milky Way galaxy, which has a supermassive black hole located in the Sagittarius A* region, meaning about 26,000 light-years away from our Solar System.
But it’s time for those supermassive black holes that become rogue to enter the cosmic scene, and a new article from ScienceAlert.com speaks about them. However, their existence is largely theoretical, being impossible to observe directly.
How many rogue supermassive black holes could exist? New simulations shed light
A team of scientists led by Angelo Ricarte of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics initiated Romulus simulations, for that matter. Supermassive black holes grow because of the accretion of stars, gas, dust, and mergers with other black holes.
Two galaxies colliding make the large potential window for the merger to be disrupted. While there could be a delay or prevention in the process, wandering black holes can appear.
The scientific team has used cosmic simulations to estimate how often it could happen and find out how many wandering black holes would still be around today.
The researchers explained, as quoted by ScienceAlert.com:
Romulus predicts that many supermassive black hole binaries form after several billions of years of orbital evolution, while some SMBHs 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.
Since black holes are very present in the Universe, let’s just hope that there isn’t one located too close to us.
The research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.