Building a towering cosmic icon may be as easy as blowing bubbles. Simulations of the billowing wind from a massive star may reveal how the famous pillars of creation were created. The finger-like columns of interstellar gas and dust known as the pillars of creation are part of the Eagle Nebula, a star-forming region about 7000 light years away from Earth. A spectacular image snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 catapulted the pillars to stardom. The dense columns of gas are being sculpted and eroded by ultraviolet radiation from the incredibly massive stars that live in the nebula. Detailed images from multiple telescopes also show dense clumps inside the pillars that suggest new stars are being born. Scott Balfour at Cardiff University, UK, wanted to understand how such massive stars are affecting their birthplaces. He made a computer simulation of the birth of a very massive star, which emerges when a dense cloud of hydrogen gas collapses under its own weight. He then mimicked stellar life over a 1.6-million-year period. As with real stars, the model star had powerful winds of radiation that created a giant bubble, which collected and compressed the leftover dust and gas as it grew. newscientist/article/dn25793-pillars-of-creation-built-by-big-stellar-bubble.html?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=hoot&cmpid=SOC%7CNSNS%7C2013-GLOBAL-hoot#.U60vZfldWSo
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 08:48:08 +0000
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