A new study suggests that the Hyades – a young collection of V-shaped stars passing through the head of the Taurus constellation – are torn apart by an invisible mass. This disorder in the bull’s head could indicate an old deposit of dark matter left over from the bull. Sweet Waycreation, the study authors said.
In the new paper, published March 24 in the magazine Astronomy and Astronomy, researchers used data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia star mapping satellite to study the history of the Hyades. Located about 150 light-years from Earth, this family of hundreds of stars is our closest star collection solar system, and is clearly visible in the night sky. (One of his brightest stars, Epsilon Tauri, is called the “bull’s eye” for its prominent position on the Taurus face.)
Astronomers estimate that the browser is between 600 million and 700 million years old (a cosmic child compared to our 4.6 billion year old sun), and has already changed dramatically in the that time, thanks to the gravitational impact of nearby collections and other materials. The authors of the new study wanted to learn more about these changes by examining the “tails” of the cluster – two clusters of stars separated from most of the body of the brass, one aimed at the Path center. the Boys and the other away from him.
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Tidal tails, as astronomers call them, occur naturally as a result of gravity interactions between groups of stars. To see the tails at their clearest and most spectacular, scientists look to come up with galleries – like the swirly ones. Galaran antenna – which gradually draws each other’s edges into clever layers of starlight.
But recently, scientists have looked at tidal tails in stellar assemblages, too. As stars within the assemblages grow older and more massive, they spout their neighbors, eventually pushing some stars toward the edge of the universe. There, stars are more likely to attract even larger matter within the constellation, gradually leaving the orbit of the cluster and creating a tidal tail. The speed and trajectory of these tails can even indicate the presence of objects that are invisible to telescopes, lead study author Tereza Jerabkova, a researcher at ESA, told Live Science.
“Stars [in tidal tails] they may be seen moving faster in some direction, and this may indicate that there is something that is attracting them, “Jerabkova said.
Advanced tails and a browser trailer usually have the same approximate number of stars, but when Jerabkova and her colleagues mapped Hyades browser tails, they saw something remarkable: The beach tail had fewer stars than the advanced tail . It looked as if the trawler’s tail was “spreading” into space, the researchers wrote.
With computer simulations, the researchers tried to find out what could be causing this imbalance. They concluded that the lump and tail were disturbed by a large lump of matter with a mass of 10 million suns, Jerabkova said, similar to how a giant galaxy can disturb a small one with its gravitational force. But even more interestingly, there was no “lump” – or anything at all – to be seen near the Hyades that could have caused such a stir.
It is one possible explanation, the researchers said dark matter – the heavy, invisible material that makes up about 27% of the world’s total mass, according to NASA. Scientists suspect that “halos” of dark matter helped shape galaxies such as the Milky Way, and that traces (or “sub-halos”) of dark matter are still scattered throughout the star. belt. The “lump” that warms Hyades ’browser may be a sub-halo of dark matter, invisibly bending the stars to its whims, the researchers said.
According to Jerabkova, that is the best explanation for Hyades’ victorious tail, with the current data and understanding of physics. That’s an “important discovery,” she said, as it confirms that data from Gaia and similar star mapping missions can reveal not only the mysteries of the stars and planets around us – but the invisible structures that underpin our universe as well.
First published on Living Science.