Image of the Day: Runaway Black Hole at Plane of the Milky Way

 

          

 

The ESA/NASA impression shows an oblique view of our Milky Way galaxy. The black-hole system GRO J1655-40 is streaking through space at a rate of 400 000 kilometres per hour - 4 times faster than the average velocity of the stars in the galactic neighborhood. The yellow star is our Sun. The black hole was formed in the disk at a distance greater than 3 kpc from the Galactic centre and must have been shot to such an eccentric orbit by the supernova explosion of the progenitor star. The runaway linear momentum and kinetic energy of this black hole binary are comparable to those of solitary neutron stars and millisecond pulsars. GRO J1655-40 is the first black hole for which there is evidence for a runaway motion imparted by a natal kick in a supernova explosion.

GRO J1655-40 is one of at least two galactic "microquasars" that may provide a link between the supermassive black holes generally believed to power extragalactic quasars and more local accreting black hole systems. For comparison, the Sun and other nearby stars have typical speeds on the order of 20 km/s relative to the average velocity of stars moving with the galactic disk's rotation in the solar neighborhood, which supports the idea that the black hole formed from the collapse of the core of a massive star. As the core collapsed, its outer layers exploded as a supernova leaving the remnant system moving through the galaxy with unusually high speed.

The Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared view of the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy below is made from more than 800,000 frames of data pieced together in an enormous mosaic of the galactic plane - the most detailed infrared picture of our galaxy ever made.

 

           

 

The Daily Galaxy via http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/j1655/more.html

Image credit: European Space Agency, NASA and Felix Mirabel (the French Atomic Energy Commission & the Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics/Conicet of Argentina)

 

Comments

[linda loughlin]

Welll...I thought that science & physics was built on the idea that for every action theres an "equal & opposite reaction,they may have thought twice at CERN etc.....
has any einsteinistic mega brain worked out the dynamics and trajectory of this Rogue??If So.... would they let us know if we had a prob.?

[Tosca Zraikat]

Well said Linda. Sometimes I think they're so preoccupied with their particular areas of research that they can miss the big picture. So, the question is, is there was a potential threat to us, would they let us know? I suspect not, or at least not until those with the power to do so have made a fast escape!

[lowonprozac]

A fast escape? To where?

[Tosca Zraikat]

dont you wonder about the urgency of the recent Mars projects and big space stations? Maybe just curiosity but maybe not. Maybe my paranoia, maybe not.

[linda loughlin]

As we are 2 thirds out on the spiral arm & it has a speed far exceedng that of any star or planet in the system 20k time faster has an elyptical orbit that cannot be tracked efficiently or estimated,it cannot be ruled out that it will hit our solar system ,we also have the major planetary alignment at the end of the year,the gravtational (pull) mechanics of which will be "astronomical,which ramps up a confrontation..paranoia no honey,big problem that even a nasa computer can solve,all they could do is create a worse case scenario,model (which I sure they are as we speak)

[Mark D]

You guys can't be serious. The biggest threat to Us is Us. The next biggest threats might include for example, large unseen objects all manner of sizes entering, orbiting and colliding across the solar system... and so the list goes on.

[qed]

I am amazed about the comments here. 'scientists missing the Big Picture' by failing to consider whether a black hole half a galaxy away is a threat to us! And these are people busy destroying the planet's biosphere so that their grandchildren could experience war, famine and death on a scale never thought possible.

[George Botha]

Indeed well said Linda. A prob or a job (maybe?)

[steve]

It's from the "Never Ending Story"! We have to believe!

[Mark D]

I am really amazed by all this. The most interesting articles on this site often get no response. As soon as a 'doomsday scenario' imlies itself everyone goes off half-cocked.

Even a radical estimate of GRO J1655-40 and its motion might suggest that we would need to sit around worrying for 150,000,000 years at the very least before our worst fears came to fruition, probably twice that long.

Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a super-massive black-hole at the centre of our galaxy... perhaps 400 million times the mass of our sun. How did it get so big... perhaps it too might swallow us eventually along with everything else in the galaxy.

[Simon]

Well I don't know about you but I'm not going to sit around worrying for 150,000,000 years!!! No siree, I'm gonna build me a spaceship. Who's with me???!!!!

[TheVitalVariant]

@Simon
Way ahead of you.

Hello from Titan. ;)

[Don]

@ Linda,
"we also have the major planetary alignment at the end of the year,the gravtational (pull) mechanics of which will be "astronomical,which ramps up a confrontation"

Um... no we don't.

There aren’t any ‘alignments’, except for the normal conjunctions that happen every year.

[speed]

if they find it threat, no i think so, te speed is low to reach oursolar system so soon, maybe later in time, even when humans are not in the world then it reach us,