A black hole with a mass of 35,000 Suns drifts through a galaxy's gas like a barge through fog. Its gravity rakes the material ahead of it, leaving a dense trail behind — a wake of gas. Some of that gas gets pulled into the black hole, and it grows.
Previously, such wandering black holes were thought to be starving: far from a galactic core, there's nothing to eat. But this one has found a way: it feeds from its own wake. Observations reveal three layers of gas: a tenuous stream ahead of the black hole, a dense trail behind, and dense clumps nearby that occasionally veil it like a curtain.
This discovery reveals a new growth channel for wandering black holes. Perhaps this is how future supermassive black holes gain mass before they settle into galactic centers.
This black hole's mass is equivalent to 35,000 Suns. If you combined all the planets, stars, and dust in the Solar System, you'd still have less than one-thousandth of this black hole's mass.