CID-42: A galaxy, located nearly 4 billion light years from Earth, with a black hole being ejected from it.
Chandra and other telescopes have shown that the galaxy CID-42 likely contains a massive black hole being ejected at several million miles per hour. The main panel is a wide-field optical image of CID-42 and the area around it. The outlined box represents the more localized view of CID-42 that is shown in the three separate boxes on the right-hand side of the graphic. An image from Chandra (top box) shows that the X-ray emission is concentrated in a single source, corresponding to one of the two sources seen in deep observations by Hubble (middle box). The precise Chandra data helps astronomers narrow their ideas about what is happening in this galaxy, supporting the ejected black hole theory.
Scale: Wide field image is 1 arcmin (1 million light years), Zoom image is 3.7 arcsec across (70,000 light years)
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Civano et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Optical (wide field): CFHT, NASA/STScI
Note: For more information, see CID 42: Giant Black Hole Kicked Out of Home Galaxy
1 comment:
There may be another way of explaining the inconsistencies of this interesting system.
First, I must propose a hypothesis called:
Mitosis of galactic nuclei. (A longer description is available.)
First consideration is that not all the black holes in a nucleus are fully merged.
Second, under extreme circumstances (forces) some portion of a rotating nucleus can be dislodged. There are many possible scenarios.
Examples are Markarian 315 and 739. Andromeda is in process. Our Milky Way or Sgr A* is planning something.
Mitosis is an important stage of development or morphology for galaxies.
It could be that in the case of CID-42 the very close encounter of two galactic nuclei caused one or both to lose some portion of their main bodies. The one large fragment and two or more smaller have been set adrift; tugged one way and another by the dominant nuclei. It will take a few billion years for this situation to be resolved. K
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