A research group led by Professor Toshihiro Handa (Radio Astronomy) of the Faculty of Science and Technology of Kagoshima University has announced that the VERA telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan emits a high-speed gas stream that rotates in a spiral shape. I used it for the first time in the world.It was published in the British academic journal "Monthly Notification of the Royal Astronomical Society of the United Kingdom" with a discovery that approaches the elucidation of the mechanism by which gas gathers and the stars grow.
According to Professor Handa, the research group used the VERA telescope to observe the protostar S5,100AB in Auriga, 235 light-years away from Earth, for a year and three months.Around the protostar, the gas rotates like a disk, and the gas flow blows out in the vertical direction of the disk.When we traced the water molecules contained in the vertical gas flow, we confirmed that they rotated in a tornado and separated at high speed.In order for the protostar to grow, it must take in the surrounding gas, but it seems that the rotation of the gas in a tornado slows down the rotation of the disk and makes it possible to take in the gas.
The results of this research are extremely important discoveries in understanding how the born stars grow.Professor Handa and his colleagues plan to make observations using other telescopes in Japan and overseas to estimate the amount of gas blown out from the star.
Professor Handa, who had a press conference at Kagoshima University, said, "Multiple hypotheses have been proposed about how the rotation of the disk slows down during star formation, which has been a mystery for many years. I want to give you a good answer. "
Source:[Kagoshima University] Discovered the world's first tornado-shaped gas flow from a freshly made star
