NASA and the European Space Agency have just revealed new images taken by the spacecraft Near infrared cameraNear infrared camera (NIRCam) for the James Webb Space Telescope in a press release accompanying a post in Astrophysical Journal. It's an amazing phenomenon JWSTJWST It was discovered by studying the star-forming region in the Milky Way, known as nebulanebula du Serpent, specifically in the northern part of this young region that contains ProtostarsProtostars Growing and even those that have already become stars on Main sequenceMain sequenceas people say AstrophysicistsAstrophysicists In their terminology – that is, whose core has become hot enough to conduct thermonuclear reactions fusionfusion I just started recently.
We know that these small objects have been observed elsewhere on our planet GalaxyGalaxy Production of bipolar aircraft ThemeTheme But curiously, in James Webb Space Telescope observations, we now see in the northern region of the Serpent Nebula that many of these streams are nearly parallel.
The mystery of the origin of the stellar universe?
In fact, this is the first observation of one of the predictions of the modern theory of star birth Protoplanetary disksProtoplanetary disks surrounding them. So this phenomenon is actually not a surprise. We are only discovering it today, because NIRCam allows surveillance in… DecisionsDecisions It is unprecedented in the near-infrared, revealing finer and smaller details than before using other space telescopes, for example the defunct Spitzer.
To understand what this is all about, some reminders of planetary origin are necessary. The first drafts of modern scientific theory on this topic go back to Kant and Laplace.
According to them, Solar systemSolar system comes fromCollapsesCollapses from U.S cloudsclouds to GasGas And rotating dust. there Centrifugal forceCentrifugal force Perpendicular to the axis of rotation opposite to the contraction of this cloud, it flattens and thus forms a protoplanetary disk in which the dust clumps into pebbles that in turn will eventually form EmbryosEmbryos Planets – in brief. The scenario was greatly improved during the second half of the twentieth centuryH century and the beginning of the twenty-first centuryH.
Sean Raymond, an astrophysicist at the Purdue Astrophysical Laboratory, tells us about the formation of the solar system according to the standard scenario through the accretion of planetesimals giving rise to planetary embryos. © Ideas in science
One key point to keep in mind: One of the basic laws of Newtonian mechanicsNewtonian mechanicsThis is known as preservation Cinematic momentCinematic moment. When a rotating object contracts, like a skater bringing his arms together, it increases its size Rotation speedRotation speed And the opposite of.
In case sunsunthis, which however contains a majority MassMass In the solar system, it rotates much more slowly than expected. So there was a mechanism that took out part of the initial angular momentum of the proto-solar cloud.
We have theories about the mechanisms involved. First, by contracting like a compressed gas, this cloud is heated to the point that part of the matter may ionize, thus producing Electrical currentsElectrical currentsthen Magnetic fieldsMagnetic fields. The cloud itself must have contained it in the beginning because we know that our Milky Way Galaxy is covered in it.
Magnetized filaments where stars are born
Calculations and simulations then show that magnetic fields affect not only the contraction of the cloud, but also its rotation, and thus finally Those formed by a protostar at its core as a result of gravitational collapse. Then the magnetic field lines are found with respect to movementsmovements of matter, for example the rotation of the protoplanetary disk and its young star by slowing down its rotation. However, angular momentum must always be dissipated, and this is what the appearance of a dipole jet will do, carrying the material in a swirling motion around the axis of the jet.
This expanded video shows the relative position of the Serpent Nebula in the sky. It begins with a photo taken by the late astrophotographer Akira Fujii on Earth, then moves to a photo of the planet. Digital sky survey. Next, an image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope appears, and finally the video arrives at an image of the snake taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, ESA, CSA. © NASA, ESA, CSA, A. Pagan (STScI) Acknowledgments: Akira Fujii, Digital Sky Survey, Spitzer Space Telescope
While so far we have only observed stars in the process of formation coming at roughly the same time from a cloud of matter collapsing and breaking up into individual stars or forming multiple systems, it had been expected that a state of matter rotating on a smaller scale in the into groups of stars whose rotation axes are nearly parallel.
In James Webb Space Telescope observations, we also see that stars with parallel dipole jets are also aligned with the axis of a filament of gas and dust containing the star-forming region of the Serpent Nebula, and its axis is even defined by magnetic field lines.
For astrophysicists, this is finally the first evidence that stars being born at the same time in a cloud of matter can indeed, as predicted by models, have rotation axes fixed by the total rotation of the cloud, which is also linked to the galaxy's magnetic fields.
The Serpent Nebula is observed
The Serpent Nebula is only one or two million years old, which is very young in cosmological terms. It also hosts a particularly dense cluster of recently formed stars (about 100,000 years old) at the center of this image, some of which will eventually reach the mass of our Sun.
As for the snake, it is a reflection nebula, meaning that it is a cloud of gas and dust that does not form a cloud of its own a lighta lightBut it shines by reflecting light from nearby stars or within the nebula.
Thus, throughout the region of this image, filaments and swirls of different colors represent starlight reflecting off protostars still forming in the cloud. In some areas there is dust in front of this reflection, which appears here in a diffuse orange color.
This area has been the scene of other serendipitous discoveries, notably a shadow a bata bat The one that beats, and which owes its name to the observations of 2020 Hubble Space TelescopeHubble Space Telescope from NASA-ESA, which revealed that it was “pulsing” or moving. This feature appears in the center of Webb's image.
Discovery summary. © NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, K. Pontoppidan (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory), c. green (Space Telescope Science Institute)
