So, NASA’s Chandra Laboratory has discovered something that’s freaking terrifying: black holes don’t necessarily stay in their home galaxies. In fact, they can actually sprint across the universe at millions of miles per hour.
What the hell? Aren’t these things ridiculously heavy? Yes, yes, they are. Astronomers believe what happened was that two black holes at the center of two galaxies collided, and merged. But, Newtonian physics being what they are, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and so much force was generated by this galactic collision that this black hole went walkabout.
The good news is that it’s four billion light years away. The bad news is that it sucked up all the gas surrounding it, so we currently have no idea where it is.
Sleep tight!
image courtesy the Bad Astronomer on Flickr