(VICE) -- An invisible cosmic behemoth might be tearing apart the closest star cluster to the Sun, leaving one side of the cluster eerily dark and devoid of stars, according to a new study.
The culprit may be a dark matter substructure, a relic that contains the mass of 10 million Suns and is made of a mysterious non-luminous substance. The possible presence of this “Galactic lump” was detected in a new map that charts out the enormous extent of the Hyades star cluster, located only 153 light years from Earth, which was published on Wednesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Scientists led by Tereza Jerabkova, a research fellow at the European Space Agency, came across the unnerving lump while examining the Hyades cluster using data collected by ESA’s Gaia satellite.
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