Galactic Danger Zone: Rogue, Solar-System Devouring Mini Black Holes

Galactic Danger Zone: Rogue, Solar-System Devouring Mini Black Holes

Could the galaxies of the Universe be stalked by rogue, all-devouring black holes? It looks that way. A recent simulation of black holes merger revealed that there could be literally hundreds of rogue black holes scattered across the Milky Way galaxy. Each one would weigh several thousand times the mass of the sun, so if these bad guys exist -- why haven’t we identified them already?

“Rogue black holes like this would be very difficult to spot,” says Vanderbilt astronomer Kelly Holley-Bockelmann. “Unless it's swallowing a lot of gas, about the only way to detect the approach of such a black hole would be to observe the way in which its super-strength gravitational field bends the light that passes nearby. This produces an effect called gravitational lensing that would make background stars appear to shift and brighten momentarily.”
The research modeled "intermediate mass" black holes. There just one problem; no one even knows if these type of light cannibals even exist. Astronomers do, however, have ample evidence that small black holes less than 100 solar masses are produced when giant stars explode.

They also have evidence that “super-massive” black holes weighing the equivalent of millions to billions of solar masses sit at the heart of many galaxies, including the Milky Way. Theoreticians have predicted that globular clusters –- ancient, gravitationally bound groups of 100,000 to a million stars –- should contain a third class of black holes, referred to as intermediate mass black holes. But so far there have only been a couple controversial observations of these objects. The existence of intermediate-mass black holes have been proposed as a possible power source for ultra-luminous X ray sources.