Mysterious Light Seen Around a Newly Forming Star
Ethan Siegel, Forbes
Growing up is hard to do in the Universe. In the great gravitational dance of the cosmos, it's the biggest, most massive seeds that usually emerge victorious: attracting more and more matter towards them from whatever's around. In a molecular cloud that forms stars, this usually means the largest-mass clumps grow into stars, while the remaining mass gets flattened into a disk. Within this disk, smaller clumps form, growing into planets, moons, and other icy and rocky bodies.
Growing up is hard to do in the Universe. In the great gravitational dance of the cosmos, it's the biggest, most massive seeds that usually emerge victorious: attracting more and more matter towards them from whatever's around. In a molecular cloud that forms stars, this usually means the largest-mass clumps grow into stars, while the remaining mass gets flattened into a disk. Within this disk, smaller clumps form, growing into planets, moons, and other icy and rocky bodies.