Conundrum Solved: Ionized Gas In High Mass Star Formation
Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - 19:31
in Astronomy & Space
Stars like Sol are relatively easy to understand, because they are numerous, and live for billions of years, but high mass stars are rare and live for only a few million years. As a result, understanding their early evolution has been a challenge. Simple models suggested that when high mass stars become hot enough to ionize the gas around them, heating it to thousands of degrees, the gas will quickly expand. But decades ago, astronomers found that regions of ionized gas around young high mass stars remain small (under a third of a light-year) for ten times longer than they should if they were to expand as predicted. read more