A baby star far away reveals secrets of star formation: report
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About 200,000 light years away from the Milky Way, there is a baby star whose birth, scientists believe, will help understand star formation.
Because, a bipolar gas stream is flowing out of the baby star called Y256, which is in the Magellanic Cloud lying some 200,000 light years away. Usually Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy.
This stream that is flowing out has a velocity of more than 54,000 kilometres per hour, according to a report in The Indian Express.
A team of researchers led by Toshikazu Onishi from the Osaka Metropolitan University and Kazuki Tokuda from the Kyushu University observed high-mass young stellar objects, or "baby stars" in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
The researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile for the study.
According to the report the presence of heavy elements in interstellar matter impacted star formation significantly.
Interestingly, heavy elements were lower in the early universe comparing to the present universe.
Their presence was scanty because there was not enough time for nucleosynthesis to produce them in stars.
Hence, it is hard to understand how different star formation in such environs from star formation today.
Low abundance of elements heavier than helium in the Small Magellanic Cloud makes it ideal target to understand star formation. It is much like most galaxies over ten billion years ago.
Researchers believe that growing "baby stars" suppress their rotational motion by molecular outflow during gravitational contraction in the present universe, accelerating star growth.
The finding suggest that the process of star formation has remained nearly similar over a period of 10 billion years.