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Research confirms star birth, magnetic fields link
BREAKTHROUGH:
A researcher at Academia Sinica was part of a team whose work provides
a glimpse into how massive stars are formed from grains of dust
By Shelley Shan
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Jun 13, 2009, Page 2
An international team of astronomers has confirmed that interstellar
magnetic fields are a crucial factor in the formation of massive stars.
The research was published in the weekly journal Science yesterday.
Ramprasad Rao, a US scientist conducting research at the newly
established Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) at Academia
Sinica, joined a group of scientists from Spain, Italy and the US to
monitor a hot molecular cloud named G31.41+0.31, the home of very young
massive stars. This was done through the use of a Submillimeter Array
(SMA) in Hawaii.
According to Academia Sinica, while massive stars comprise only 1
percent of the stellar population of the galaxy, they dominate the
appearance and evolution of the interstellar medium composed of gas and
dust grains. But how these massive stars were formed remained a mystery.
Molecular cloud G31.41+0.31 is located 23,000 light years from Earth in
the Serpens constellation. Scientists found that the dust grains in
this particular cloud are partially aligned with magnetic field lines.
“From the dust-polarized emission detected with the SMA, we derived the
structures of the magnetic field that threads the cloud. We found that
it has an hourglass shape, similar to what we found three years ago
around a Sun-like stellar embryo,” said Spanish scientist Josep Miquel
Girart, the team’s head scientist, who was quoted in a statement
released by Academia Sinica yesterday.
“But G31.41+0.31 is 20 times larger, 200 times more massive and 100,000
times brighter,” he said.
The scientists concluded that the magnetic field “is the main agent
controlling the collapse of the cloud.”
They said, however, that the research also introduced new questions,
such as the exact details of the process of how the molecular clouds
broke into different massive stars.
Astrophysicist Frank Shu (徐遐生) described the results as a
“breakthrough” and said they would provide an important link to the
study of star formation in other galaxies.
“[Through the research] We can then hope to venture out to the distant
universe, which promises to connect the science of star formation to
the science of galaxy formation,” Hsu said. “We are on the threshold of
another exciting unification in science.”
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