Has Gaia found missing link in black hole evolution

Paris (ESA) May 24, 2023

When ESA's Gaia spacecraft scanned the Scorpius constellation and its ancient globular star cluster Messier 4, it captured something strange: a huge dark blob at the cluster's centre, 800 times more massive than our Sun. It is normal for globular clusters to have dark centres made up of many dead stars. But the mass at the centre of Messier 4 looks different - despite being especially larg