Massive Star Systems Formed By Accretion (And An Astrophysics Mystery Gets Solved)

Sunday, January 18, 2009 - 06:50 in Astronomy & Space

Massive stars, those up to 120 times the mass of our sun, should blow away the clouds of gas and dust that instead feed their growth.   Despite outward-flowing radiation pressure that exceeds the gravitational force pulling material inward, these huge stars get bigger, which hasn't made a lot of sense.  Until now. Using 3-D radiation hydrodynamics simulations, a group of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, discovered that these massive stars also tend to occur in binary or multiple star systems. read more

Read the whole article on Scientific Blogging

More from Scientific Blogging

Related

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox!