Astronomers say that there are hundreds of black holes in the group which is 20 times bigger than our sun.
In the very core of a globular cluster of stars there may be hundreds of supermassive black holes, he wrote Science Alert.
The star cluster under study is called Palomar 5. This star stream extends over 30 thousand light years and is located 80 thousand light years from Earth. Astronomers often call such global clusters “fossils” of the early world. These clusters are usually characterized by their high density and spherical shape, containing from 100 thousand to 1 million very old stars. Some of these stars are almost as old as the Universe itself.
At Focus. Technologies have emerged Telegram channel. Subscribe so you don’t miss the latest and most exciting news from the world of science!
The stars of each globular cluster formed around the same time, because they were born from the same gas cloud. There are around 150 such organizations in the Milky Way.
Among these clusters, one type of star group stands out, which is more like a long river of stars that stretches across the sky. Such streams used to be rare for scientists, but the Gaia space observatory, which maps the Milky Way, is discovering more and more such objects in the Universe.
“It is not known for sure how these tidal currents form, but one theory is that they are star clusters,” says Marc Giles, an astronomer at the University of Barcelona.
The Palomar 5 cluster is unique in that it has both a wide and sparse distribution of stars and a tidal stream that spans more than 20 degrees of the sky. And it makes its way through the Milky Way.
The team of researchers simulated the orbit and evolution of each star in the Palomar 5 cluster to see how they ended up where they are today.
Also, recent evidence suggests that there may be populations of black holes in the central regions of global clusters. Since the gravity of black holes in these clusters is known to cause stars to fly apart, the scientists included them in their simulation.
The results of the study showed that the number of supermassive black holes inside Palomar 5 would have led to its present-day shape. Orbital interactions could eject stars from their own cluster into the observed tidal flow. But this would require a larger number of black holes.
The truth is that stars can leave clusters faster than black holes can.
“The number of black holes is about three times larger than we expected based on the number of stars in the cluster. Therefore, more than 20% of the total mass of the cluster is made up of black holes. Each of them has a mass about 20 times higher than the Sun.
The study also showed that the group will completely disintegrate in about a billion years. Shortly before this time, the cluster will already consist of black holes surrounding the galactic center.
Let us remember that every 10 years an unusual black hole flies through the solar system. If there are primordial black holes, there is a chance that at least one of them is passing through our planetary system and will be found.
