Zou het zomaar kunnen dat een of andere journalist iets niet goed begrepen heeft?
Tuurlijk. Ik vroeg me al af of het allemaal wel klopte. Maar ik heb ondertussen ook de
persmededeling van het ESA gevonden, en daarin staat effectief het volgende:
One picture even catches an ‘impossible’ star in the act of formation.
Presented today during a major scientific symposium held at the European Space Agency (ESA), the results challenge old ideas of star birth, and open new roads for future research.
Herschel’s observation of the star-forming cloud RCW 120 has revealed an embryonic star which looks set to turn into one of the biggest and brightest stars in our Galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years. It already contains eight to ten times the mass of the Sun and is still surrounded by an additional 2000 solar masses of gas and dust from which it can feed further.
“This star can only grow bigger,” says Annie Zavagno, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille. Massive stars are rare and short-lived. To catch one during formation presents a golden opportunity to solve a long-standing paradox in astronomy. “According to our current understanding, you should not be able to form stars larger than eight solar masses,” says Dr Zavagno.
This is because the fierce light emitted by such large stars should blast away their birth clouds before any more mass can accumulate. But somehow they do form. Many of these ‘impossible’ stars are already known, some containing up to 150 solar masses, but now that Herschel has seen one near the beginning of its life, astronomers can use the data to investigate how it is defying their theories.
Ik snap er niet zo veel van eigenlijk: "Sterren kunnen niet groter zijn dan 8 keer de massa van de zon, maar we kennen verschillende zulke sterren, sommige tot 150 maal groter in massa dan de zon." Euh...
Mooie foto's in elk geval!