Scientists discover radio signal from inside an ancient star cluster

Researchers have made a breakthrough discovery which shows signs of the early universe.

A star cluster which can be dated back to 1700 has displayed a radio signal via scientists' technological advances.

They have created the most sensitive image that has ever been known, all whilst the cluster can actually be seen with the naked eye.

It’s known as 47 Tucanae, and is ‘very old, giant balls of stars that we see around the Milky Way’.

Creating the image didn’t come easy though, taking researchers 450 hours of work using CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array.

Dr Bahramian, a leading scientist from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia, said: "They're incredibly dense, with tens of thousands to millions of stars packed together in a sphere.

"Our image is of 47 Tucanae, one of the most massive globular clusters in the galaxy. It has over a million stars and a very bright, very dense core."

It is not uncommon for astronomers to convert radio signals into images, and this is how they created a picture of 47 Tucanae.

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There could be multiple reasons for signal detection, but author, Dr Alessandro Paduano, said it could be one of two things.

"The first is that 47 Tucanae could contain a black hole with a mass somewhere between the supermassive black holes found in the centres of galaxies and the stellar black holes created by collapsed stars," he explained.

"While intermediate-mass black holes are thought to exist in globular clusters, there hasn’t been a clear detection of one yet.

"If this signal turns out to be a black hole, it would be a highly significant discovery and the first ever radio detection of one inside a cluster."

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And the second of the two explanations is even more intriguing: "A pulsar this close to a cluster centre is also a scientifically interesting discovery, as it could be used to search for a central black hole that is yet to be detected."

The breakthrough cluster is the second brightest globular cluster in the night sky.

Another research scientist who was involved with the project, Dr Tim Galvin, said it had really pushed boundaries in terms of what they thought they were capable of.

He added: “This project has stretched our software to its limits, in terms of both data management and processing, and it has been really exciting to see the wealth of science that these techniques have enabled.”