SOUL Reveals Cosmic Secrets After Observing Hidden Seeds of Giant Stars

The great scrutiny capacity of the ALMA international astronomical observatory has made it possible to obtain unprecedented images of the birth of massive stars, where the chemical elements necessary for the emergence of life are forged.

Thanks to the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), located in Chile, an international research team that includes, among others, Kaho Morii and Patricio Sanhueza, has made an important discovery by revealing 800 “star seeds” inside huge clouds. cosmic. The discovery is vital to understanding the enigmatic formation process of massive stars, which in turn play a key role in the formation of the building blocks of life.

These results have been achieved thanks to the sensitivity and resolving power of ALMA, which allowed the research team to observe in detail 39 massive cosmic clouds known as infrared dark clouds (IRDCs), where, in theory, massive stars are formed.

The research team used ALMA to identify 800 stellar seeds, or molecular cloud nuclei, in what turned out to be the largest such find to date. To their surprise, 99% of these seeds lack the mass necessary to form massive stars, which allows us to deduce that this type of star must evolve differently from the way stars with lower masses do and that the The main factor in its formation may be the density of the nucleus rather than its mass.

Artist’s rendering of the internal structure of an infrared dark cloud revealed by ALMA. The raw material used in the star formation process is made of dust and gas. In this image, the most dense regions are represented in white and the less dense ones in blue. Some newly formed protostars eject jets of gas, shown in pink. (Image: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/K. Morii et al.)

Kaho Morii, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo in Japan, comments: “With ALMA’s advanced capabilities we have greater certainty that some massive stars exhibit a unique pattern of evolution. It would seem that being in a dense environment is more important than we thought for the growth of these cosmic giants.”

Patricio Sanhueza, a Chilean who works at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and participates in ALMA, adds: “This catalog of starseeds is monumental. It is the basis for revolutionizing our understanding of massive star formation processes and refining our models.”

The study is titled “The ALMA Survey of 70μm Dark High-mass Clumps in Early Stages (ASHES). IX. Physical Properties and Spatial Distribution of Cores in IRDCs.” And it has been published in the academic journal The Astrophysical Journal. (Source: SOUL)