Previously, astronomers had never observed black holes destroying stars in such numbers. Now scientists
The authors of the new work carried out detailedstudies of two different classes of black holes. The first is stellar-mass black holes, which typically weigh between 5 and 30 times the Sun. The second is supermassive black holes, which are at the center of most large galaxies and weigh millions or even billions of solar masses. Recently, evidence has also emerged of the existence of an intermediate class - black holes of medium mass.
When the stars are so close to each otherother in extremely dense clusters, then they can easily begin to be absorbed by black holes of average mass. And it appears that the denser a star cluster, the more likely it is to contain a growing black hole.
Vivien Baldassar, Washington State University Pullman
The authors hypothesized that if the density of stars in a cluster exceeds a threshold value, then the stellar-mass black hole at the center of that cluster will grow rapidly.
The researchers studied the clusters and came toconcluded that those whose density exceeded the threshold were about twice as likely to contain a growing black hole. Compared to those whose density was below the threshold. The density threshold also depends on how fast the stars move in the clusters.
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