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Supermassive Black Hole Rocketing Out of Distant Galaxy At 5 Million MPH (blastr.com)

The Bad Astronomer writes: Astronomers have found a supermassive black hole barreling out of its home galaxy at 5 million miles per hour. The 3 billion solar mass behemoth formed from the merger of two slightly smaller black holes after two galaxies collided and themselves merged. The resulting blast of gravitational waves is thought to have been asymmetric, causing a rocket effect which launched the resulting black hole away. It's currently 40,000 light years from the galaxy's core. Source: ESA/Hubble

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  1. Re:currently? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    currently 40,000 years ago.

    Umm, no.

    First off, it's not in our galaxy, so the 40Kyears from galactic center is irrelevant to how far in the past the event was.

    Secondly, it's moving about 2200 km/s. So it has moved 40k ly from its original position at or near its galactic center over the last 5.4 megayears.

    Plus, of course, the time the light has taken to get here. No, I'm not going to read TFA to find out how far away it is to determine more precisely when it happened because...

    Ultimately, of course, relativity says that talking about when something happened in a galaxy far, far, away is completely meaningless anyways....

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    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"