Supermassive black hole on a ‘collision course’ with the Milky Way

This hidden black hole, estimated to be around 600,000 times the mass of The Sun, was detected by analysing the trajectories of hypervelocity stars – stars travelling much faster than average.

The LMC is destined to collide with our galaxy in approximately 2.4 billion years. When this collision occurs, the supermassive black hole in the LMC will migrate to the galactic centre and eventually merge with Sagittarius A* – the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole. Astronomers believe that this is one way black holes grow from smaller sizes to even bigger ones.

It was in 1971 that British astronomers predicted the existence of a black hole at the centre of our galaxy, which was discovered three years later. Then, in 2019, the first image of a supermassive black hole was captured. Today, they are a fundamental part of our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve.

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/2151913/supermassive-black-hole-collision-milky-way