SPACE — Astronomers may have discovered a new black hole closest to Earth. The terrifying space hole is thought to be hiding in the Hyades Star Cluster, located only about 150 light years from the Sun.
The black hole was probably ejected from the dense star cluster millions of years ago, then roamed the galaxy alone. The black hole is about ten times closer than the black hole previously thought to be closest to Earth.
Visible in the constellation Taurus, the Hyades is an open cluster consisting of hundreds of stars. Open clusters like this are collections of stars that are believed to have formed at the same time from the same massive cloud of gas and dust. Because of this, stars in such clusters are known to have the same basic characteristics, such as chemical composition and age.
To detect the closest black hole to our planet, a team led by Stefano Torniamenti, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Padua, simulated the movement and evolution of stars in the Hyades. Simulations were also carried out with the equation for the existence of a black hole.
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The scientists then compared the results of this simulation with previous direct observations of the speed and position of the stellar population in the open cluster. The latest data set comes from the Gaia space telescope.
“Our simulations can only match the mass and size of Hyades simultaneously if there are multiple black holes at the center of the current cluster,” Torniamenti said in a statement published by Space.com, Tuesday, September 12 2023.
Torniamenti and his colleagues found that the model that best fits the Hyades observations is one that includes two or three black holes in the star cluster. Additionally, simulations involving black holes in star clusters that were theoretically ejected 150 million years ago also match the Gaia data.
The research team explained that if the black hole was thrown violently from the Hyades when the cluster was about a quarter of its current age, around 625 million years, then evidence of the existence of a black hole could still be seen.
In fact, if the black hole were currently beyond the Hyades, it would still be the closest black hole to Earth, despite its rogue status. This is consistent with simulations showing that if the black hole is not currently in the Hyades, then it is still nearby.
Previously, the record-holding black holes closest to Earth were Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2. Both were only discovered using Gaia data in 2023.
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Gaia BH1 is located 1,560 light years from Earth, while Gaia BH2 is located approximately 3,800 light years. While this means both black holes are in Earth’s backyard (cosmic terms), they are still 10 and 20 times farther away than the Hyades cluster with its possible 2 or 3 black holes.
This new research and the previous discoveries of Gaia BH1 and BH2 provide examples of how Gaia, launched in 2013, has changed the shape of astronomy. The space telescope allowed astronomers to study the positions and velocities of individual stars in clusters like the Hyades for the first time.
2023-09-12 15:05:00
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