Sharmila Kuthunur is a Seattle-based science journalist covering astronomy, astrophysics and space exploration. Follow her on X @skuthunur
Astronomers have discovered the first known instance of a baby star"sneezing." The cosmic discharge, which may have occurred as recently as a few hundred years ago, reveals how infant stars expel most of their magnetic energy very early in their evolution — a shedding mechanism that stops their high-spinning profiles from breaking apart.
"This discovery was unexpected," Kazuki Tokuda, an astronomer at Kyushu University in Japan and the lead author of the study, told Live Science. While previous telescope observations of the stellar nursery hadn't revealed the peculiar structures, ALMA spotted streamers not only escaping the disk but also much further away, revealing the baby star"sneezed" multiple times in the past.
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.A leading theory posits they do this by ousting a considerable amount of magnetic energy. Previous telescope observations support the"magnetic braking" theory, because a star that held onto all its magnetic energy"would generate magnetic fields many orders of magnitude stronger than those observed in any known protostar," Tokuda said in a statement.
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