Stars form when molecular clouds collapse under gravity, spinning into protoplanetary disks where planets and stars coalesce. Not all the material in the disk is used up - some is expelled in high-velocity jets along the disk's poles, helping regulate angular momentum and mass. These jets are typically thought to disperse harmlessly into space.
But when a team of astronomers reanalyzed data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), they found something different. Near a young star named WSB 52 - located 441.3 light-years away in the Ophiuchus constellation - they detected an expanding bubble of gas slamming into the surrounding protoplanetary disk, contorting its structure. Although similar bubbles have been seen before, none had previously shown signs of physically impacting the disk itself.
Further investigation revealed that the bubble's center was perfectly aligned with the rotation axis of WSB 52's disk - ruling out a random alignment and pointing to a direct connection. Researchers concluded that a jet from the baby star had triggered the bubble's creation by colliding with a pocket of cold gas, compressing it until it exploded outward. The expanding shell of gas then crashed back into the disk, generating the distortion.
"This is like a science fiction scene where a beam weapon causes an explosion, and the debris flies back at the attacker," said Masataka Aizawa of Ibaraki University, who led the study. "Nature shows us something even more intense. This finding reminds me just how intricate and dynamic star formation really is. We plan to investigate how these feedback events shape the evolution of stars and planets."
Research Report:Discovery of Jet-Bubble-Disk Interaction: Jet Feedback on a Protoplanetary Disk via an Expanding Bubble in WSB 52
Related Links
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Stellar Chemistry, The Universe And All Within It
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