NASA Goddard
What would happen to a galaxy should the black hole at its centre “leave” for whatever reason?
Herman D’Hondt
Sydney, Australia
In the short term, astronomically speaking, nothing much would happen. Without the black hole, there would only be some missing mass at the centre. Depending on the galaxy, this could be from 100,000 to a few billion solar masses. Galaxies have a total mass of between a billion and 30 trillion solar masses, so the missing amount would be a fraction of 1 per cent.
If the black hole vanished from the centre of our galaxy, the effects…
