Study Of Dark Clouds In The Milky Way Galaxy Solves Mystery Behind The Size Of Massive Stars
Study Of Dark Clouds In The Milky Way Galaxy Solves Mystery Behind The Size Of Massive Stars
By Kukil Bora
on December 21 2013 3:12 PM
Astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, or ALMA, telescope, a radio telescope in the Atacama desert of northern Chile, to find out why some stars grow much larger than the vast majority of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
According to the astronomers, certain massive stars can have at least eight times the mass of the sun -- a trait that presents an intriguing mystery. To find an answer to this long-standing question, astronomers used the ALMA telescope to survey the cores of some of the darkest, coldest, and densest clouds in the Milky Way Galaxy to search for the telltale signs of star formation.
“A starless core would indicate that some force was balancing out the pull of gravity, regulating star formation, and allowing vast amounts of material to accumulate in a scaled-up version of the way our own sun formed,” said Jonathan Tan, an astrophysicist at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and lead author of a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal on Friday. “This suggests that massive stars and sun-like stars follow a universal mechanism for star formation. The only difference is the size of their parent clouds.”
The clouds, know as infrared dark clouds, were observed approximately 10,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellations of Aquila and Scutum. Because these cloud cores are so massive and dense, gravity should have already overwhelmed their supporting gas pressure, allowing them to collapse to form new, sun-like stars, scientists said.
More:
http://www.ibtimes.com/study-dark-clouds-milky-way-galaxy-solves-mystery-behind-size-massive-stars-1518032