Unexplained Compact Mass Found Inside Messier 4 Cluster (Black Hole Or Something Else?)

how wonderful person this is Anton and today we're going to be discussing some of the recent discoveries and some of the more unusual discoveries coming from the cluster you see behind me the closest Global cluster to planet Earth known as M4 or massier4 in essence a collection of hundreds of thousands of different stars that have been orbiting around the central region for nearly 13 billion years

with more recent discoveries suggested that there is something extremely unusual somewhat Compact and very massive in the center the designers are currently unable to explain possibly some kind of a black hole or maybe something entirely different so let's discuss this cluster and the discovery and also talk about the potential implication for astronomy but first I actually wanted to discuss the cluster itself because intriguingly this is

one of the most iconic clusters you can technically see with a relatively cheap commercial telescope it would be located somewhere in the constellation of Scorpius and is extremely close to the very bright and Terrace that you see right there and overall looks relatively large in the night skies it's approximate total size is actually somewhat similar to the full moon but it's obviously not as bright as

a matter of fact it is relatively dim nevertheless at the approximate distance of 7 000 light years away from planet Earth this is the closest such object and because it's about 75 light years across it appears relatively big in the night skies but you are unlikely to see it without a telescope or relatively powerful binoculars but in a telescope it would resemble something like this a

fuzzy ball of light and historically this was the first ever cluster where the scientists were able to see individual stars to some extent confirming the overall nature of these unusual objects but despite of this these objects are still really mysterious as a matter of fact we've recently discussed this in a previous video where the main point was that we actually do not understand the origin of

global clusters for the most part because the all seem to have relatively similar properties they all seem to be approximately 13 billion years old and they all seem to possess a lot of ancient Stars none of them contain relatively young stars or any Star formation so it's as if all of these GoPro clusters were actually created around the same period of time sometime in existence of

the universe which by the way was to some extent the main conclusion from the recent study as a matter of fact the recent study also established that there's a very high chance that the center of these unusual objects was most likely some kind of a really ancient massive star a star that we sometimes refer to as population 3 star and star that over time might have

than a typical black hole produced by a supernova of a massive star and so for many years scientists speculated that we might be able to find these intermediate Mass black holes deep inside various Goldberg clusters such as massive four in other words the speculation here was that somewhere in the center most likely directly in the center there is some kind of a mass that's a lot

more massive than a typical starter that serves as the foundation for the entire cluster and because this cluster is the closest it would make this a perfect Target to investigate these ideas these propositions and to try to see if there is actually anything in the center and this is of course one of approximately 150 different Global clusters so far discovered in the Milky Way this one

is actually a little bit closer to the center of the Galaxy with a single orbit taking approximately 116 million years to move across the Milky Way all the Intrigue it also has a relatively eccentric orbit and so it does fast relatively close to Center which very likely causes tidal disruption which possibly then causes some stars to escape from the cluster itself but that's of course just

a proposition and a theory and has not been proven yet but it basically suggests that this cluster must have been bigger and more massive in the past and so overall this is a very interesting opportunity to study all sorts of different physics that we still do not understand and it's already been quite successful at providing a lot of information for example in this observation from just

a few years ago the Hubble discovered these objects you see right here some of the oldest stars in the entire galaxy and in this case white dwarfs extremely dim white dwarfs orbiting all around this particular cluster but barely visible at all and this is super super impressive Because the actual Luminosity coming from these white dwarfs is somewhat similar to a relatively dim light bulb if this

light bulb was placed on the moon and observed from planet Earth that's how ridiculously powerful the Hubble Is and that's what it was able to observe a few years ago and so the discovery of these unusual white dwarfs imply that there are probably a lot of them all over the cluster as a matter of fact some of them can even maybe form the core or in

other words maybe the entire Center of this particular cluster is nothing but a bunch of wide Works orbiting around one another creating the Central Mass and the Central Foundation with some other objects potentially being neutron stars as well some posers have already been discovered here so we know they exist as well and so the question that the scientists had in this case was so what exactly

forms the center in order to basically preserve the global shape and in order to avoid any gravitational interaction that can potentially kick out other stars from the entire system or just rephrase this what exactly keeps this particular Global cluster so spherical for billions of years now one potential explanation was of course these 13 billion year old white horse these are obviously some of the oldest wide

world we've ever discovered and potentially some of the oldest stars in the entire galaxy but the recent analysis calculating the total mass inside the core suggested that there is actually a lot of math here possibly up to about 800 solar masses which would basically require over a thousand white doors in orbit in a relatively small space now in this image you see a couple of dozen

but detecting a thousand white dwarfs in a relatively small space would have most likely happened a long time ago so it's unlikely that whatever is in the middle is a white Wharf or a combination of white wars and so it could be a thousand neutron stars or possibly a few hundred Stellar Mass black holes and so that was pretty much the main purpose behind the people

you see right here the scientists wanted to physically find out what's most likely happening in the middle of this cluster and thus per extension explain other clusters as well in this case focusing on some of the data from the iconic Gaia telescope that's able to provide exact observation of the motion of the Stars even if they're relatively far away but also combining this with recent observations

from the Hubble Space Telescope and so by measuring the velocities of stars extremely close to the center the scientists determine that there is definitely something that's relatively massive right in the middle nearly 800 solar masses this was of course based on the observations of star velocities of various objects right here in the middle and they actually use approximately 6 000 different stars in order to work

out the potential Mass right in the middle but exactly what these stars were orbiting was not actually very clear the only thing that was clear was that it was something that was not particularly large no more than 3 000 astronomical units across just to give you a bit of a visual guidance that's essentially where the so-called Oort cloud begins in the solar system and so this

initial modeling suggested that it was something relatively compact but it didn't really tell us what and so even though this technically could be an intermediate Mass black hole an intriguing Discovery from the cluster known as Palomar 5 just a few years ago showed us that it can possibly be something else here the scientists actually identified a cluster of smaller black holes orbiting around one another now

it was only 20 black holes with an overall mass of less than 100 solar masses but it's still possible it's possible for this to be just a cluster of small massive objects and not intermediate math black hole likewise it can be something entirely different a compact mass that we don't have an explanation for yet maybe Dark Matter maybe something else so for example if this is

a black hole especially intermediate Mass black hole we should see something else possibly x-rays maybe some other emissions something else should be coming from the center nothing has been discovered yet as a matter of fact nothing has ever been seen coming from the center implying that whatever is in a center it's seems to be pretty much inactive and whatever this is in the middle here it

seems to be way more compact than any previous discoveries and so it's definitely something that just really small in size but something that is really massive but at the moment just no good explanation so once again a black hole should be visible in possibly other frequencies because of the interaction with additional matter compact Stars such as white dwarfs or even neutron stars should be emitting something

else as well that possibly could be detected with Hubble telescope and a cluster of smaller black holes based on various models and simulations would actually result in a lot more stars potential escaping and in a slightly different distribution of overall velocities so at the moment there's actually no explanation that fits everything nobody differentially knows what's in the middle of this unusual cluster and of course a

lot of other clusters as well now intermediate matte black hole is still the best possible candidate but because so far no detection of any other frequencies has been found from any of the Clusters it just doesn't have a really good explanation for why all of these intermediate Mass black holes seem to be also quiet and so for all we know it's maybe some other physics which

just still do not understand possibly in regards to the emotion of stars in these clusters maybe in regards to how they were originally created 13 billion years ago something that doesn't happen anymore or just another mystery to add to the mystery book or in my case with a very large playlist that should be available in the description and so until future discoveries we're not going to

know much more for now we're going to assume that it is maybe an intermediate Mass black hole but that answer could change in the future until then check out some of the previous videos in the description thank you for watching subscribe share this with someone who was learning about space and Sciences come back tomorrow to learn something else and maybe support patreon by Julian Channel membership

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