Astronomers have witnessed a young, sun-like star blasting out high-energy gamma radiation for the primary time.
The remark represents the primary evidence that this sort of low-mass star, called a T. Tauri star and surrounded by a planet-forming disk of gas and mud, can emit gamma radiation. In a nutshell, this sort of radiation represents essentially the most energetic form of sunshine. Down the road, these findings could have necessary implications for our understanding of stars and planetary systems during their adolescence.
“This observational evidence is crucial for understanding the origin of sources which have previously remained unknown for greater than a decade, which is definitely a step forward in astronomy,” Agostina Filócomo, discovery team leader and an astronomer on the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, said in an announcement. “It is usually critical to grasp the processes that occur through the early phases of star formation: If a T Tauri star produces gamma-ray radiation, it’s going to affect the gas conditions of the protoplanetary disk and, consequently, the evolution of planet formation.”
The astronomers captured their observations of this intriguing star with the Fermi satellite telescope, which observes the universe in gamma rays. In other words, this telescope has the flexibility to gather high-energy radiation data that will be tough to collect from the surface of Earth. Fermi has been observing the sky because it launched in 2008, but about 30% of the gamma rays it has seen have yet to be attributed to a source. Thus, Filócomo and her team set about attempting to discover a few of these mysterious sources.
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Gamma rays could come from tantrum-throwing infant stars
The research team principally found that many gamma rays appear to originate from regions with actively forming stars. That is something that defied explanation and thus required deeper investigation, with the team honing in on the star-forming region NGC 2071.
Specifically, Filócomo and colleagues searched for T.Tauri stars in NGC 2071, which lies within the northern a part of the molecular cloud Orion B, positioned around 1,350 light years from Earth. T.Tauri stars are notable because they are sometimes found near star-forming regions, still cocooned within the very gas and mud that created them. And since they’re shrouded in these gaseous cradles, T. Tauri stars exhibit fluctuating levels of brightness — making them a form of variable star.
The team identified three different unidentified gamma-ray sources that gave the impression to be coming from the direction of NGC 2071, where no less than 58 T. Tauri stars are known to be currently forming. There are not any other objects within the region that might be sources of gamma-ray emissions, the researchers reasoned.
The team thinks T. Tauri stars might be emitting gamma rays sporadically during powerful flare events called “megaflares,” which occur when magnetic energy stored within the atmospheres of young stars gets released in the shape of powerful electromagnetic bursts.
This idea is analogous to the way in which solar flares are launched by the sun, except they occur on a radically larger scale. Megaflares can stretch for distances similar to several times the radius of the celebs that launch them in the primary place and are so powerful that, if the sun were to blast out such an eruption, life on Earth could be threatened.
Yet despite this destructive potential, some scientists argue that megaflares within the early history of the solar system, when the sun was embedded in a disk of gas and mud, can have actually been useful to planet birth by driving gas and triggering the formation of pebbles and other small rocky materials.
As such, not only could the team’s findings help account for previously unattributed gamma-ray detections, but could have implications for our understanding of the solar system — especially through the period when our planet was being created.
“The invention of this phenomenon serves to grasp how not only the sun but in addition our home planet, Earth, were formed and evolved,” Filócomo concluded.
The team’s research was published Aug. 23 within the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.