Certain stars approaching the conclusion of their lifetimes gradually decrease their rotation in what can be described as a "retirement solo," which signals that their time is coming to an end while also illustrating the birth of new ones.
Astronomers from China have observed this celestial movement to explore the history of the Milky Way, discovering that stars forming now rotate significantly quicker compared to those created billions of years back.
Using data from Europe’s Gaia space telescope alongside other celestial surveys, scientists from the Changchun Observatory in northern China examined thousands of stars, each having a mass approximately one and a half times that of our Sun.
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They discovered that during the development of the Milky Way, new stars started rotating up to ten times more quickly compared to their significantly older peers. This increased rotation leads to gas clouds breaking down into smaller pieces, which complicates the formation of large stars.
A research paper, set to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, offers the initial clear proof that the cloud structures responsible for forming stars within the galaxy have become increasingly chaotic over the years.
Our research indicates that the angular momentum of stars within a specific mass range contains important hints about the history of the Milky Way," the group mentioned in a release on the observatory's website. "It provides a novel approach to understanding how the galaxy has evolved over time.
This change in the conditions for star formation might also alter our galaxy, slowly promoting the creation of smaller, longer-lasting stars, whereas large stars — along with the powerful supernovae they produce — may grow less common.
For many years, scientists have used a star's composition, its age, and movement to look back into the history of the Milky Way.
Stars come into existence with rotation, and the speed at which they rotate is influenced by the circumstances within the clouds from which they originated.
Numerous stars experience a decrease in rotational speed over time. For example, when the Sun was born approximately 4.6 billion years ago, it probably required fewer than 10 days to finish one full spin.
Currently, it completes one rotation every 25 days near the equator. When it depletes its fuel and evolves into a red giant, it will rotate significantly slower, potentially taking hundreds of years to finish a single spin.
In the recent research, scientists from Changchun examined stars with masses ranging from 1.4 to 1.8 times that of the Sun. In contrast to our Sun, these more massive stars retain a significant portion of their initial rotation over billions of years.
As their lifetimes draw to a close, these stars undergo significant expansion. With growing size comes a decrease in rotational speed.
It resembles a ballet dancer stretching her arms to decelerate while spinning," the group remarked, referring to this last slowing down as the star's "final performance.
With accurate data obtained from the Gaia mission, the researchers analyzed the angular momentum of thousands of stars with different ages and discovered an interesting trend: younger stars rotate more quickly than their older counterparts—not because the older stars lose speed over time, but because they were formed in this manner.
The research indicates that the star-birth conditions within the Milky Way have become increasingly chaotic and active during the last six billion years, leading to the formation of new stars in every cycle.
The group looks forward to further research enhancing understandings of how young stars evolve right before they start burning.
They also advocate for additional information about stars having a broader spectrum of elemental makeups, which may assist in understanding how various kinds of stars acquire or shed rotational speed during their creation.
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