Simulations solve a 20-year-old riddle about why nebulae around masssive stars don't disappear
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - 10:29
in Astronomy & Space
The birth of the most massive stars -- those ten to a hundred times the mass of the Sun --has posed an astrophysical riddle for decades. Massive stars are dense enough to fuse hydrogen while they're still gathering material from the gas cloud, so it was a mystery why their brilliant radiation does not heat the infalling gas and blow it away.