OK, that makes sense. Do super massive black holes not form away from the center? I think the post after yours touches on an answer to that.
That's a good question. In short, I don't think they know yet how every galaxy managed to get a supermassive black hole at its center. And it's beginning to look like every (large?) galaxy does indeed have one.
The Science Channel had a show on supermassive black holes not too long ago (and is my source for all this stuff...hehehe) and they mentioned that the very fact that every large galaxy they look at has a supermassive black hole at its center very strongly suggests that there is some previously unsuspected but fundamental relationship between supermassive black holes and galaxy formation that they don't understand. Did the galaxy form around the supermassive black hole? Or was the black hole born in the galaxy, grow up in the galaxy, and ultimately reshape the galaxy so that it was at the center. Or perhaps it somehow migrated to the center?
The point you made elsewhere in this thread is 100% correct: If it's the latter, that is, if the galaxy was there first, then we should be able to look out at the "edge" of the known universe and see baby galaxies that don't have supermassive black holes at their centers yet.
Not that it's worth anything since I'm not a scientist, just a fascinated layperson, but personally I think the supermassive black holes had to come first, born in the Big Bang, and galactic nebulae condensed around them.
I have a big problem seeing how one could migrate to the center of a galaxy given the orbital velocities and momentum considerations you guys were talking about earlier. And to have a galaxy form around a pre-existing supermassive black hole that's floating out in intergalactic space, where you wouldn't think there would be sufficient matter to make an entire galaxy, doesn't ring true either, at least not to my ears. Steady State theories have been ruled out. So the only way I can really imagine it happening is the black holes were formed during the Big Bang and they seeded all the galaxies that we see today during the so-called "Dark Age" of the universe, i.e., the first 300,000 years or so. </theorizing from peanut gallery!...lol>