Researchers Observe the Birth of New Solar Systems
Astronomers are gaining new insights on how our solar system was born from observations of a nearby star-forming region in the constellation Ophiuchus. The research was published in Nature Astronomy.
In the 1970’s, scientists reported finding short-lived radionuclides inside of meteorites. They said that these elements were either blown into the nascent solar system by a nearby exploding star or by strong stellar winds from a kind of massive star called a Wolf-Rayet star. Now, for the first time, scientists may have been able to observe this process in action.
In the present study, scientists examined multiwavelength observations of the star-forming region in Ophiuchus, including new infrared data, to understand the interactions between star-forming gas clouds and radionuclides produced in a nearby cluster of young stars.
Their observations included imaging data in wavelengths from millimeters to gamma rays, enabling them to visualize the flow of aluminum-26 from a nearby star cluster towards the star-forming region. Läs mer
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