This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Astronomy, Stars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Astronomers have now found new evidence of matter that spirals outward from a young star like a jetstream. Due to this spiral motion, the jets help the star to grow by drawing momentum from the surrounding disk. Angular momentum is the tendency for a spinning object to continue spinning. It applies to star formation because a star forms at the center of a rotating disk of hydrogen gas. A star grows by gathering material from the disk. However, gas cannot fall inward toward the star until that gas sheds its excess angular momentum. As hydrogen nears the star, a fraction of the gas is ejected outward perpendicular to the disk in opposite directions, like water from a fire hose, in a bipolar jet. If the gas spirals around the axis of the jet, then it will carry angular momentum with it away from the star.
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