Scientists are beginning to understand better what happens when black holes travel on the Milky Way. Usually, a supermassive black hole (SMBH) resides in the center of a massive galaxy. Sometimes such objects can “wander” around the host galaxy, moving away from the center, for example, into star halos - an almost spherical region of gas and stars surrounding the main part of the galaxy.
There is a theory that these phenomena often occur during a galactic fusion in an expanding universe. The smaller galaxy joins the larger one, shifting its hole. In a new study, scientists predict that galaxies with masses, like those of the Milky Way, should have several supermassive black holes. The team applied new cosmological modeling to predict the dynamics of SMBH in galaxies with better accuracy than previous programs.
There is little chance that a certain strange black hole will be so close to the Sun that it will have any impact on our system. Therefore, a close approach of one of these wanderers should occur every 100 billion years, which is almost 10 times the age of the Universe.
Since it is assumed that wandering SMBHs live far from the galactic centers and outside the galactic disks, they are unlikely to increase the volume of gases, which makes them invisible. Now scientists are trying to think of a way to indirectly determine their presence.
