Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars

science.nasa.gov

30 points·totaldude87··9 comments

Assuming that emergence of life, and intelligent life, is common, how different would it be to emerge and start looking at the sky from one of the stars in this black hole's trail? Few other stars, no surrounding galaxy creating a band of light in the sky on dark nights... and once they start measuring distances (also much harder to bootstrap with few neighborhood stars to even figure out eh Main Sequence...), being in a much more potentially lonely situation

I think it was later proposed it could be a galaxy that we are viewing from side on/angle - https://www.space.com/runaway-black-hole-tail-stars-mystery-...

Direct link to video, which didn't play embedded for me:

https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/hubble-r...

Neat! What are the chances this trail of stars ends up twisting into a spiral galaxy?

It would take a massive gravitational field (supermassive black hole) to cause this, because stars don’t have herd mentality…or indeed any intelligence…

I'm imagining a small asymmetry in angular momentum piling up over billions of years, along with, yes, gravity. Nothing so stupid as ascribing stars a "herd mentality."

Stupidity is a dangerous insult game to play.

I’m not going to reply in kind, but rather point to the science of supermassive black holes being the “glue” allowing the spiral galaxies to exist at all…

You were the one characterizing my question as implying some sort of intelligence. Don't act like you're taking the high road because I thought the words you put in my mouth were stupid. You could have, for example, pointed to some science, without belittling my curious question.

Article from April 2023

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