• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The Closest Black Holes To Earth Could Be Inside Famous Hyades Star Cluster

September 11, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Evidence has been found of black holes a tenth of the distance of the previous closest observation to Earth. Moreover, unlike previous discoveries, this is one where anyone with access to moderately dark skies can stick out their finger and say, “They’re there.”

The Hyades Star Cluster is overshadowed in the public mind by the Pleiades, which proceed it across the sky during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter nights. That’s because the Pleiades are not just brighter, but much tighter. The Hyades are an older cluster, having had time to disperse quite a bit, but at 153 light-years away they’re also the closest star cluster to Earth.

Advertisement

The current record-holder for the closest black hole is Gaia BH1, some 1,600 light-years away. Reports of closer candidates have been refuted. However, stellar black holes form from the collapse of the largest stars, whose short lives usually take place entirely inside star clusters that haven’t had time to disperse. The Hyades is a logical place to look for closer examples.

Dr Stefano Torniamenti of the University of Padua led a team to measure the locations and movements of the Hyades’ stars to see if they were under the influence of unseen gravitational forces. “Our simulations can only simultaneously match the mass and size of the Hyades if some black holes are present at the centre of the cluster today (or until recently),” Torniamenti said in a statement. 

The stars’ movements proved less helpful than hoped. However, attempts to use computer models to replicate the stars’ distribution around the cluster’s center produced the best match, with two or three black holes still in the Hyades. Acceptable matches were also found when the black holes were assumed to have been ejected about 150 million years ago. That makes sense since the Hyades, thought to be 600-700 million years old, has already lost a substantial portion of its stars, either from random movements or an encounter with a neighboring mass.

“This observation helps us understand how the presence of black holes affects the evolution of star clusters and how star clusters in turn contribute to gravitational wave sources”, said Professor Mark Gieles of the University of Barcelona.

Advertisement

The study was made possible by the exceptional precision with which Gaia can locate stars, particularly those as nearby (in galactic terms) as the Hyades.

Although the model suggests almost all surviving black holes in the cluster should have coupled up with stars, no candidate stars were identified with strong evidence of orbits around heavier objects.

There are several hundred stars in the Hyades, with a total mass around 400 times that of the Sun, but most require telescopes to see. However, the brightest members of the cluster form a distinctive V shape, completed by the much closer and brighter Aldebaran, which happens to lie in the same direction.

Most searches for stellar-mass black holes (as opposed to the supermassive type found at the center of galaxies) have concentrated on globular clusters in the Milky Way’s halo. Without that regular spherical shape, open clusters like the Hyades are harder to investigate. However, they can exist much closer to Earth, opening up exciting opportunities for study if the hunt proves successful.

Advertisement

The study is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Paris ramps up security as jihadist attacks trial starts
  2. Cricket-‘Western bloc’ has let Pakistan down, board chief says
  3. Analysis-Diverse boards to pick the next Boston and Dallas Fed bank chiefs
  4. Ancient Bison Found In Permafrost Is So Well Preserved Scientists Want To Clone It

Source Link: The Closest Black Holes To Earth Could Be Inside Famous Hyades Star Cluster

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Rain At Burning Man? Prepare For The Return Of The Three-Eyed Dinosaur Shrimp
  • Supercell Storm Leaves 200-Kilometer-Long Hail Scar Across Canada’s “Hailstorm Alley”
  • “I Never Thought I’d Get To See A Blue Lobster In Person”: Meet Neptune, He’s 1-In-2-Million
  • Why Don’t Polar Bears Hibernate?
  • Anyone Born After 1939 Is Unlikely To Live To 100
  • Are Space-Made Medicines The Future? Find Out More In Issue 38 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • An Alien-Like Fish With A See-Through Head And Green Eyes Lurks In The Ocean’s Dark Depths
  • Africa Wants To Change Misleading World Map, The “Wow!” Signal Was Likely From An Extraterrestrial Source, And Much More This Week
  • A “Good Death”: How Do Doctors Want To Die?
  • People Are Throwing Baby Puffins Off Cliffs In Iceland Again – But Why?
  • Yet Another Ancient Human Skull Turns Out To Be Denisovan
  • Gen Z Might Not Be On Course For A Midlife Crisis – Good News, Right? Wrong
  • Glowing Plants, Punk Ankylosaur, And Has The Wow! Signal Been Solved?
  • Pulsar Fleeing A Supernova Spotted Where Neither Of Them Should Be
  • 20 Years After Hurricane Katrina: Is It Time For A New Approach To Hurricane Classification?
  • Dog Named Scribble Replicates Quantum Factorization Records – So We Tried It Too
  • How Old Is The Solar System? (And How Can We Tell?)
  • Next Week, A Record-Breaking Over 7 Billion People Will See The Total Lunar Eclipse
  • The Goblin Shark Has The Fastest Jaws In The Ocean, Firing Like A Slingshot At Speeds Of 3.1-Meters-Per-Second
  • We Thought Geological Boundaries Were Random. Now, A New Study Has Identified Hidden Patterns
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version