For everyone who's worried about the outcome of the US election this week, here's something else to worry about instead.
Astrophysics tells us that just about every galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole at its center. Sometimes, though, you get a situation where one galaxy merges with another one, and the black hole leftover from the smaller galaxy ends up settling into an uneasy truce with the larger one as they end up in a binary orbit.
But what if the black hole of a smaller galaxy didn't end up stuck? What if, through some combination of orbit and speed, a supermassive black hole and a small halo of its closest stars shot free of the grip of a larger galaxy, flying off into space? What happens then?
Team Rocket, Blasting Off at the Speed of Light!
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Well that's what some intrepid folks at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory just announced they've found: a supermassive black hole, classified as B3 1715+425, fleeing at a speed of 2,000 miles per second with whatever it could hold on to as it departs the ZwCl 8193 galactic cluster.
This little galactic remnant is teeny - we're talking a shadow of its former self. With the supermassive black hole at the center of a typical galaxy (like the Milky Way for example) is in the center of a cloud of stars around 100,000 light years across, this stripped-down, nearly-naked black hole has a shadow of a galaxy of only 3,000 light years across surrounding it.
There's so little in the way of stellar material that astronomers say this halo of stars around the black hole will eventually burn themselves out without creating any new stars. With no stellar material to fall into the black hole, there'll be no visible accretion disk, no event horizon - the black hole becomes completely invisible.
Silent, Deadly, and Invisible - like a Dog's Fart
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Yes, you read that right - it's going to become an invisible, inescapable engine of astrophysical death and destruction, hurtling through the universe at 2,000 miles a second and utterly demolishing anything within reach of its tidal forces for eternity. Or until George RR Martin finally finishes writing A Song of Ice and Fire, whichever comes first.
This roving supermassive killer isn't much of a threat to us, of course. Since it hasn't eaten itself out of house and home yet, it's still detectable. It's also not heading towards Earth like a massive invisible Pac-Man and we're the next pellet in his path. Of course even if we were slated to become Pac-Man food, we would have something like 3 billion years to move out of the way.
No, what you should be more concerned about is that there could be other naked, invisible rampaging stealth killer supermassive black holes out there that have already gone dark. Let's face it: if it's already happened once, the universe is a large enough place that the odds are high it can happen again - or has already happened in the past.
So hey, don't worry! If your candidate of choice ends up losing the election on Tuesday, you can at least know that it's not as bad as being devoured by a giant, unexpected black hole that no one can see coming. Conversely, you can start praying for one to come by. Just don't hold your breath.
Edit: Looking for the original research paper that goes into the findings in detail? @lemouth found it here.
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