An international team of astronomers from the US, Germany and France has discovered how disks of gas and dust around young stars support the star’s evolution and help planets form. The research was published in the scientific journal magazine Nature Astronomy (NatAstro).
The team collected observations of four systems with protoplanetary disks. Data analysis showed what our solar system looked like when it formed about 4.6 billion years ago.
Scientists calculated that 3 thousand new stars are formed every second in the observable part of space. These objects in their “infancy” are called protostars.
Over time, the “cocoon” of gas and dust around the newborn star flattens, transferring enough mass to the star to begin the process of converting hydrogen into helium.
Until recently, scientists did not know how the mass of gas and dust feeds the star, because for this the rotating protoplanetary disk had to lose its angular momentum.
In the new study, scientists found that the disk lost its inertia due to strong cosmic “winds” caused by magnetism. These turbulent processes pull gas from the surface of the disk, removing angular momentum.
Earlier astronomers I learnedHow gas giants composed of 1 mm sized particles appear in protoplanetary disks.