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Old 01-12-2017, 11:27 AM
gary
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ALMA discovers infant stars surprisingly close to Milky Way supermassive black hole

In a 28 Nov 2017 press release from ALMA, they have announced the
surprising discovery of infant stars in the immediate vicinity of the
supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ALMA
At the center of our galaxy, in the immediate vicinity of its supermassive black hole, is a region wracked by powerful tidal forces and bathed in intense ultraviolet light and X-ray radiation. These harsh conditions, astronomers surmise, do not favor star formation, especially low-mass stars like our Sun. Surprisingly, new observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) suggest otherwise.

ALMA has revealed the telltale signs of eleven low-mass stars forming perilously close — within three light-years — to the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, known to astronomers as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). At this distance, tidal forces driven by the supermassive black hole should be energetic enough to rip apart clouds of dust and gas before they can form stars.

The presence of these newly discovered protostars (the formative stage between a dense cloud of gas and a young, shining star) suggests that the conditions necessary to birth low-mass stars may exist even in one of the most turbulent regions of our galaxy and possibly in similar locales throughout the Universe.

Full Press Release here :-
http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/pr...ve-black-hole/


Paper here by Yusef-Zadeh et. al "ALMA Detection of Bipolar Outflows: Evidence for Low-mass Star Formation within 1 pc of Sgr A*" (requires subscription) :-
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10...13/aa96a2/meta
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