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Black Hole in Search of a Home
jose parinas writes "Interesting news from the ESO observatory on Paranal about black holes that travel. From the article: 'For 19 of [the low redshift quasars], they found, as expected, that these super massive black holes are surrounded by a host galaxy. But when they studied the bright quasar HE0450-2958, located some 5 billion light-years away, they couldn't find evidence for an encircling galaxy. This, the astronomers suggest, may indicate a rare case of collision between a seemingly normal spiral galaxy and a much more exotic object harbouring a very massive black hole.'" More from the article: "Has the host galaxy been completely disrupted as a result of the collision? It is hard to imagine how that could happen. Has an isolated black hole captured gas while crossing the disc of a spiral galaxy? This would require very special conditions and would probably not have caused such a tremendous perturbation as is observed in the neighbouring galaxy. Another intriguing hypothesis is that the galaxy harbouring the black hole was almost exclusively made of dark matter." Update: 09/17 00:15 GMT by Z : Edited for clarity.
I volunteer to adopt it, I think it would make a great companion plus the added perk of being an infinite power source.
*rolls up newspaper* but if it starts behaving badly, we're gonna have a problem.
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"...a much more exotic object harbouring a very massive black hole."
This brings Uhura's "exotic" dance in Star Trek V to mind.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
You let one in and there goes the whole neighborhood!
Yeah, it was much simpler when everything was just God's will.
Scientists are baffled as to how the different handed socks ended up in completely separate galaxies. However, some have stated that the apparent long-range transport phenomenon does provide hints for the mechanisms behind unexplained sock behaviors in this part of the universe.