3 ms·

It's not tugged towards the black hole in a straight line - the word "dragged" fits best if you interpret it like the drag on an airplane, something that's impe

• photochemsyn 4y ago
  I suppose a lot depends on the frame of reference, but if this came about from two stars colliding, it seems safe to assume these two stars were in relatively stable orbits around the galactic center. Those orbits were stable because of the dragging effect of the black hole, much like Earth's orbit is stable because of the dragging effect of the Sun. If the Earth smacked dead-on into another Earth orbiting in the opposite direction around the sun, I imagine most of the combined mass would start falling into the sun due to net loss of momentum, although jets of material might get accelerated further out into the solar system, as well as inwards. In that case 'dragged' might make more sense. The case for two stars seems more complicated, they start orbiting each other before merging, which could be a very energetic event if they were large enough, i.e. a 'merger-triggered core collapse supernova'.