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Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Upgraded Very Large Array Telescope Will Spot Baby Solar Systems—If It's Funded
New Mexico's Plains of San Agustin are otherworldly: Silence, sand and sharp plants reign on the valley floor. Knobbly volcanic rock rises above. Pronghorns' legs and jackrabbits' ears break up the landscape. And so, too, does one of the world's largest telescopes. The plains house the aptly named Very Large Array (VLA)—a radio telescope made of 27 different antennas, each of which looks like a home satellite dish on steroids. In the otherwise empty desert, they spread into a Y shape that can extend 22 miles end-to-end. When the antennas are pointed at the same thing in the sky at the same time, they function together as one large telescope, simulating an instrument as wide as the distance between the dishes. In this case, then, images from the VLA have as much resolution as they would if it were a single telescope 22 miles wide: high definition, in other words. The VLA became iconic, and inspirational to a generation of astronomers, thanks to the movie Contact, in which Jodie Foster's character uses the array to hear an alien communication. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] The VLA's antennas, the true stars of the film, simultaneously look like they don't belong in the landscape and also like they've always been here. They haven't, of course, but their construction began in the 1970s, making the VLA the oldest instrument in the portfolio of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). This federally-funded organization builds, maintains and operates radio telescopes that any astronomer—regardless of their institutional affiliation or citizenship—can apply to use. But the VLA, now in its middle age, is due for a replacement. After all these decades, astronomers want something shiny, fully modern and more capable: a new build with all the bells and whistles rather than a charming old Colonial that's been remodeled piecemeal. NRAO is working on that, planning the VLA's proposed successor: the Next-Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). (Astronomers may be scientifically creative, but they are linguistic straight shooters.) On a Friday afternoon in late April, the organization gathered political leaders together, alongside scientists and engineers, to unveil a prototype antenna—one that will be cloned a couple of hundred times to make up the future ngVLA. It loomed on the plains just beyond the partygoers, standing alongside its predecessors, the old and the new in stereo with each other. 'The amount that technology has advanced since the VLA was created is amazing,' says Jill Malusky, NRAO's news and public information manager. 'A VLA antenna and an ngVLA antenna look very different because they are.' Guests wandered near the antennas, checking out a spread of food that included a sculpture, made in the medium of watermelon, of a radio telescope antenna. A chamber quartet played in the background, a single fern fronting them, with an open bar lubricating the event. It was fancy—for science. But for astronomers, the ngVLA is a big deal, and the event was intended, in part, to bolster the political support needed to make it happen. At the moment, it's a proposed project—and still requires final funding. 'Having a physical antenna we can point to, and test, to prove the value of this project is such a milestone,' Malusky says. 'It makes it all more real.' Representing an orders-of-magnitude improvement to the VLA that would complement other radio telescopes in the U.S. and abroad, the ambitious project has the enthusiastic yes of the astronomical community. But whether big-science telescopes, radio or otherwise, will survive the current funding environment remains a dark matter. That uncertainty is part of why NRAO's event elicited a spectrum of emotions for Malusky. 'It's a mix of excitement and trepidation,' she says. 'Can we get people invested in the potential of a major project that is still gathering resources and just over a decade to fruition?' That Friday afternoon, Tony Beasley, director of NRAO, stood at the front of a hardy event tent and faced the prototype. Its dish was made up of shiny panels assembled into an octagon. From its bottom edge, supportive struts held up a secondary reflecting surface and a receiver (basically the radio version of an optical telescope's camera) that looked a bit like the spaceship Foster's character boarded in Contact. The antenna, about as wide as a bowling lane is long, has been designed to collect radio waves from space—beamed from stars that are being born or dying, the stuff between stars, and more. As radio light comes in, it will hit the main dish and bounce up to the secondary reflector and then the receiver, which will catch the waves and turn them into digital signals that will then be sent to computers. As a start, the prototype dish will hook up to VLA's aging ones and gather data alongside them—it will be an apprentice of sorts. 'You see one antenna out there,' said Beasley, directing the audience's attention beyond the tent, which was being shaken by the wind to such an extent that people also cast their eyes upward to assess its structural integrity. NRAO ultimately plans to build 262 more antennas and spread them across the U.S., with their numbers concentrated in the Southwest. Of those antennas, Beasley continued, '192 of them will be visible from where I'm standing right here.' Together, the ngVLA's antennas could pick up a cell-phone signal from 500 billion kilometers (more than 310 billion miles) away (although that wouldn't be the most likely find). That means it could detect an Android embedded in the Oort Cloud, the collection of comets that makes up the outer part of the solar system. The future telescope's resolution should be high enough to pass a no-glasses eye exam in New York City if the chart of letters were placed in Los Angeles. That precision gives it scientific latitude, allowing it to address some of astronomers' highest-priority questions, such as how planets come to be and how solar systems like ours form. 'You could, say, probe a cloud that is forming planets and find out where the planets are—like individual gaps in the cloud that the planets are carving out,' says David Kaplan, an astronomer and physics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Of all the radio telescopes out there, the ngVLA would be the planetary 'flagship' for star and planet formation, Kaplan says. At high radio frequencies and big antenna separations, 'it would be the only game in town.' The ngVLA will also look for the organic molecules and chemical conditions of new solar systems that might someday spur life. It will show how galaxies come together and evolve, use the Milky Way's center to test ideas about how gravity works and investigate how stars develop. And it will hunt black holes and their outbursts. Given those varied abilities, the telescope was highly ranked in astronomers' 'decadal survey,' a yearslong process in which the astronomical community takes stock of its most valued scientific questions and assesses which future telescopes are best suited to find some answers. Funding from agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), which bankrolls NRAO, typically follows the survey's recommendations. The survey recommended the ngVLA as a top priority. 'It can change the landscape,' says Matt Dobbs, a physicist at McGill University, who studies the origin and evolution of the universe and worked on the survey alongside Kaplan. NRAO hopes to start construction on the ngVLA in 2029, with initial operations beginning in 2033. The possibility is a bright spot for American radio astronomy. The VLA is more than 40 years old; the Green Bank Telescope, completed in 2001, is more than 20. And NRAO's latest instrument, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, opened 12 years ago. The latter two, though not new, aren't going anywhere, as far as anyone knows. But they do different kinds of scientific analyses than the VLA does and the ngVLA will. The new telescope does, though, have a whippersnapper nipping at its heels. Another future radio observatory, called the Deep Synoptic Array 2000 (DSA-2000), is planning an order of magnitude more dishes than the ngVLA—2,000 of them. But each will be only around 16 feet across, whereas ngVLA's dishes will measure 60 feet. DSA-2000 will also work at a different radio frequency range than the ngVLA. DSA-2000's development is also moving faster than that of the VLA's successor, though, in large part, that is because the former has relied on private funding more than federal resources, as the ngVLA's prototyping has. In taking a step back from dependence on the NSF, the DSA-2000 crew might be on to something. Just days before the ngVLA ceremony, the NSF canceled more than 400 active grants; one day before, the agency's then director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned. 'This is a pivotal moment for our nation in terms of global competitiveness,' he said in his goodbye letter. 'NSF is an extremely important investment to make U.S. scientific dominance a reality. We must not lose our competitive edge.' No one knows what the future of NSF-funded astronomy, let alone NSF-funded radio astronomy, looks like. President Donald Trump hasn't said much about that particular domain yet. But not building the ngVLA could put that edge in jeopardy. Dobbs, though, holds out hope for the U.S.'s role in radio astronomy's future, in part because of the propulsion of its past. 'The United States has everything it needs to make that project a reality,' he adds. Whether it will do so, though, requires gathering more data from the future. After all, it's bad luck to count your antennas before they hatch. Dobbs has been putting his focus on smaller radio telescopes, such as one called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) and its successor, acronymed CHORD. Both map how hydrogen was distributed in the early universe and detect fast radio bursts. Their antennas are cheap(ish), their overall footprint small, and their ambition is limited to specific science—in this case, gas maps. At the prototype-antenna unveiling, then, it made sense that there was a liminal feeling to what was otherwise a celebratory gathering. And it was conspicuous that representatives from NSF, the agency that would fund the telescope's construction and operation, weren't there, which Beasley said was the case 'for various reasons.' Chris Smith, interim director of the NSF's division of astronomical sciences, did send a letter to be read to the wined-and-dined crowd. 'NSF funded this development not just to ensure the technical feasibility of the advanced capabilities of ngVLA,' he wrote. It also supported the prototype as 'a way of creating new innovations in the field of radio astronomy.' And that may be true. But those who gathered at NRAO's event also hope, specifically, that the ngVLA, a receptacle for optimism about the future of radio astronomy in the U.S., will sprout from this dry ground. 'It starts with a single step,' Beasley said at the event—in this case, a single antenna.
Scientific American
7 days ago
- Science
- Scientific American
Futuristic Radio Telescope Will Spot Baby Solar Systems—If It's Funded
New Mexico's Plains of San Agustin are otherworldly: Silence, sand and sharp plants reign on the valley floor. Knobbly volcanic rock rises above. Pronghorns' legs and jackrabbits' ears break up the landscape. And so, too, does one of the world's largest telescopes. The plains house the aptly named Very Large Array (VLA)—a radio telescope made of 27 different antennas, each of which looks like a home satellite dish on steroids. In the otherwise empty desert, they spread into a Y shape that can extend 22 miles end-to-end. When the antennas are pointed at the same thing in the sky at the same time, they function together as one large telescope, simulating an instrument as wide as the distance between the dishes. In this case, then, images from the VLA have as much resolution as they would if it were a single telescope 22 miles wide: high definition, in other words. The VLA became iconic, and inspirational to a generation of astronomers, thanks to the movie Contact, in which Jodie Foster's character uses the array to hear an alien communication. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The VLA's antennas, the true stars of the film, simultaneously look like they don't belong in the landscape and also like they've always been here. They haven't, of course, but their construction began in the 1970s, making the VLA the oldest instrument in the portfolio of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). This federally-funded organization builds, maintains and operates radio telescopes that any astronomer—regardless of their institutional affiliation or citizenship—can apply to use. But the VLA, now in its middle age, is due for a replacement. After all these decades, astronomers want something shiny, fully modern and more capable: a new build with all the bells and whistles rather than a charming old Colonial that's been remodeled piecemeal. NRAO is working on that, planning the VLA's proposed successor: the Next-Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). (Astronomers may be scientifically creative, but they are linguistic straight shooters.) On a Friday afternoon in late April, the organization gathered political leaders together, alongside scientists and engineers, to unveil a prototype antenna—one that will be cloned a couple of hundred times to make up the future ngVLA. It loomed on the plains just beyond the partygoers, standing alongside its predecessors, the old and the new in stereo with each other. 'The amount that technology has advanced since the VLA was created is amazing,' says Jill Malusky, NRAO's news and public information manager. 'A VLA antenna and an ngVLA antenna look very different because they are.' Guests wandered near the antennas, checking out a spread of food that included a sculpture, made in the medium of watermelon, of a radio telescope antenna. A chamber quartet played in the background, a single fern fronting them, with an open bar lubricating the event. It was fancy—for science. But for astronomers, the ngVLA is a big deal, and the event was intended, in part, to bolster the political support needed to make it happen. At the moment, it's a proposed project—and still requires final funding. 'Having a physical antenna we can point to, and test, to prove the value of this project is such a milestone,' Malusky says. 'It makes it all more real.' Representing an orders-of-magnitude improvement to the VLA that would complement other radio telescopes in the U.S. and abroad, the ambitious project has the enthusiastic yes of the astronomical community. But whether big-science telescopes, radio or otherwise, will survive the current funding environment remains a dark matter. That uncertainty is part of why NRAO's event elicited a spectrum of emotions for Malusky. 'It's a mix of excitement and trepidation,' she says. 'Can we get people invested in the potential of a major project that is still gathering resources and just over a decade to fruition?' A Vanguard Antenna That Friday afternoon, Tony Beasley, director of NRAO, stood at the front of a hardy event tent and faced the prototype. Its dish was made up of shiny panels assembled into an octagon. From its bottom edge, supportive struts held up a secondary reflecting surface and a receiver (basically the radio version of an optical telescope's camera) that looked a bit like the spaceship Foster's character boarded in Contact. The antenna, about as wide as a bowling lane is long, has been designed to collect radio waves from space—beamed from stars that are being born or dying, the stuff between stars, and more. As radio light comes in, it will hit the main dish and bounce up to the secondary reflector and then the receiver, which will catch the waves and turn them into digital signals that will then be sent to computers. As a start, the prototype dish will hook up to VLA's aging ones and gather data alongside them—it will be an apprentice of sorts. 'You see one antenna out there,' said Beasley, directing the audience's attention beyond the tent, which was being shaken by the wind to such an extent that people also cast their eyes upward to assess its structural integrity. NRAO ultimately plans to build 262 more antennas and spread them across the U.S., with their numbers concentrated in the Southwest. Of those antennas, Beasley continued, '192 of them will be visible from where I'm standing right here.' Together, the ngVLA's antennas could pick up a cell-phone signal from 500 billion kilometers (more than 310 billion miles) away (although that wouldn't be the most likely find). That means it could detect an Android embedded in the Oort Cloud, the collection of comets that makes up the outer part of the solar system. The future telescope's resolution should be high enough to pass a no-glasses eye exam in New York City if the chart of letters were placed in Los Angeles. That precision gives it scientific latitude, allowing it to address some of astronomers' highest-priority questions, such as how planets come to be and how solar systems like ours form. 'You could, say, probe a cloud that is forming planets and find out where the planets are—like individual gaps in the cloud that the planets are carving out,' says David Kaplan, an astronomer and physics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Of all the radio telescopes out there, the ngVLA would be the planetary 'flagship' for star and planet formation, Kaplan says. At high radio frequencies and big antenna separations, 'it would be the only game in town.' The ngVLA will also look for the organic molecules and chemical conditions of new solar systems that might someday spur life. It will show how galaxies come together and evolve, use the Milky Way's center to test ideas about how gravity works and investigate how stars develop. And it will hunt black holes and their outbursts. Given those varied abilities, the telescope was highly ranked in astronomers' 'decadal survey,' a yearslong process in which the astronomical community takes stock of its most valued scientific questions and assesses which future telescopes are best suited to find some answers. Funding from agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), which bankrolls NRAO, typically follows the survey's recommendations. The survey recommended the ngVLA as a top priority. 'It can change the landscape,' says Matt Dobbs, a physicist at McGill University, who studies the origin and evolution of the universe and worked on the survey alongside Kaplan. Telescope Prospects NRAO hopes to start construction on the ngVLA in 2029, with initial operations beginning in 2033. The possibility is a bright spot for American radio astronomy. The VLA is more than 40 years old; the Green Bank Telescope, completed in 2001, is more than 20. And NRAO's latest instrument, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, opened 12 years ago. The latter two, though not new, aren't going anywhere, as far as anyone knows. But they do different kinds of scientific analyses than the VLA does and the ngVLA will. The new telescope does, though, have a whippersnapper nipping at its heels. Another future radio observatory, called the Deep Synoptic Array 2000 (DSA-2000), is planning an order of magnitude more dishes than the ngVLA—2,000 of them. But each will be only around 16 feet across, whereas ngVLA's dishes will measure 60 feet. DSA-2000 will also work at a different radio frequency range than the ngVLA. DSA-2000's development is also moving faster than that of the VLA's successor, though, in large part, that is because the former has relied on private funding more than federal resources, as the ngVLA's prototyping has. In taking a step back from dependence on the NSF, the DSA-2000 crew might be on to something. Just days before the ngVLA ceremony, the NSF canceled more than 400 active grants; one day before, the agency's then director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned. 'This is a pivotal moment for our nation in terms of global competitiveness,' he said in his goodbye letter. 'NSF is an extremely important investment to make U.S. scientific dominance a reality. We must not lose our competitive edge.' No one knows what the future of NSF-funded astronomy, let alone NSF-funded radio astronomy, looks like. President Donald Trump hasn't said much about that particular domain yet. But not building the ngVLA could put that edge in jeopardy. Dobbs, though, holds out hope for the U.S.'s role in radio astronomy's future, in part because of the propulsion of its past. 'The United States has everything it needs to make that project a reality,' he adds. Whether it will do so, though, requires gathering more data from the future. After all, it's bad luck to count your antennas before they hatch. Dobbs has been putting his focus on smaller radio telescopes, such as one called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) and its successor, acronymed CHORD. Both map how hydrogen was distributed in the early universe and detect fast radio bursts. Their antennas are cheap(ish), their overall footprint small, and their ambition is limited to specific science—in this case, gas maps. At the prototype-antenna unveiling, then, it made sense that there was a liminal feeling to what was otherwise a celebratory gathering. And it was conspicuous that representatives from NSF, the agency that would fund the telescope's construction and operation, weren't there, which Beasley said was the case 'for various reasons.' Chris Smith, interim director of the NSF's division of astronomical sciences, did send a letter to be read to the wined-and-dined crowd. 'NSF funded this development not just to ensure the technical feasibility of the advanced capabilities of ngVLA,' he wrote. It also supported the prototype as 'a way of creating new innovations in the field of radio astronomy.' And that may be true. But those who gathered at NRAO's event also hope, specifically, that the ngVLA, a receptacle for optimism about the future of radio astronomy in the U.S., will sprout from this dry ground. 'It starts with a single step,' Beasley said at the event—in this case, a single antenna.
Time of India
20-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
NASA scientists find icy water on the most unexpected planet beyond the Earth, with the hottest temperatures
The search for water beyond Earth has always been an interesting area for scientists, driven by a simple yet important idea that where there is water, there may be life. The universe is filled with clues waiting to be uncovered, be it dry Martian riverbeds or icy moons orbiting gas planets. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now With the advancement in technology and every discovery, we're reminded that our solar system holds more surprises than we ever imagined. While Mars is often the most commonly discussed planet with water beyond the Earth, in 2012, NASA scientists discovered strong evidence of water ice on the most unexpected planet with one of the most extreme environments in the solar system. The most unlikely planet for water ice Finding water in the solar system usually involves looking for hospitable environments, places with mild temperatures, underground water reservoirs, or atmospheres thick enough to shield and preserve moisture. But this time it has been found on Mercury, which defies all these expectations. With an atmosphere so thin that it's barely there, a scorching surface, and a day that lasts nearly six Earth months, it seems like the last place water could survive. Yet, during NASA's MESSENGER mission in 2012, scientists detected areas on Mercury that were not only cold but permanently shielded from sunlight. These polar regions, inside deep craters, showed something unusual, which included strong radar reflections that were highly suggestive of ice. 'The radar signatures show high reflectivity and strong depolarization,' NASA reported, which were the classic signs of water ice on planetary surfaces. How was this discovery made? The discovery was made without setting foot on Mercury by using instruments like the Arecibo radio telescope, the Goldstone antenna, and the Very Large Array (VLA); researchers studied radio signals bouncing off Mercury's surface. The high reflectivity and depolarization effects, especially near the poles, were strong indicators of water ice, despite the hostile surroundings. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Why does ice stay frozen on a planet so close to the Sun? Well, that is all about geography; the craters on Mercury's poles never see sunlight. Without exposure to heat, temperatures in these shadows remain cold enough for ice to persist for possibly billions of years. But how did ice get there? NASA offers two possible theories. One is that water was delivered via meteorites and comets, especially during the chaotic early years of the solar system. The second is that Mercury may have once released water vapor from within, which later froze in the cold, shadowy craters. This discovery significantly changed how scientists view planetary water sources. It proves that temperature and atmosphere aren't the only deciding factors; specific geological and orbital conditions matter, too.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Star 20 times the Sun's mass caught gorging on gas in cosmic birth ritual
Astronomers have captured a stellar feast in action — the clearest view yet of a massive baby star devouring gas to fuel its rapid growth. The star, dubbed HW2, lies about 2,300 light-years from Earth in a stellar star-forming region known as Cepheus A. Weighing in at 10 to 20 times the mass of our sun, HW2 is a rare example of a massive protostar caught in the act of formation. The discovery also offers new insight into a fundamental astrophysical mystery: how massive stars, which often end their lives in spectacular supernova explosions, manage to gather such enormous amounts of mass during their formation. Using radio observations of ammonia, a molecule common in interstellar space and a common cleaning agent used on earth, astronomers were able to map the swirling disk of gas feeding the star, despite thick clouds of dust cloaking the region, making it obscure. The observations confirm that even the universe's most massive stars grow by pulling in gas from surrounding disks, following the same fundamental process as their smaller stellar siblings. "We are always trying to get general rules that can explain the largest number of phenomena we observe," study leader Alberto Sanna, a researcher at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy, said in a release. "Our findings strongly support that the same physical processes, although scaled up, can form both stars like our sun as well as stars of tens of solar masses." In 2019, the team used the Very Large Array radio telescope network in New Mexico to track the radio glow of ammonia molecules, which glow brightly at radio wavelengths. This allowed them to pierce through the dense dust cocoon that blocks visible light to get a look as close as possible to the star. The data show that gas in HW2's accretion disk is plunging inward at a staggering pace, fueling the young star at a rate of about two Jupiter masses per year — one of the fastest stellar growth rates ever recorded. But HW2's future depends heavily on its surroundings, Sanna noted. The team also found an uneven distribution of gas in the disk. According to their observation, the eastern side of the disk holds nearly twice as much material as the western side and displays more turbulence. This imbalance hints that the disk may be receiving an external boost, possibly from a nearby filament-like stream of gas and dust acting as a cosmic pipeline. Such streamers are increasingly believed to connect forming stars with their outer envelopes, channeling fresh material to keep growth going. While these structures around HW2 remain unseen for now, the study lays out predictions that future telescopes can test, Sanna said. "We need to understand for how long HW2 can keep growing," he added. The results of the study will soon be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. It is available on the arXiv preprint server.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Giant young star is growing by 2 Jupiter masses every year, new study shows
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers have captured the clearest view to date of a massive young star gulping down swirling gas, offering a rare glimpse into how these cosmic titans grow to their enormous sizes. The star in the making, known as HW2, is about 10 to 20 times as massive as our sun and lies about 2,300 light-years from Earth, in the heart of a star-forming region called Cepheus A. Despite the thick shrouds of dust that usually obscure such regions, researchers managed to peer through the veil surrounding HW2 and study the gas feeding its rapid growth. Using radio observations of ammonia, a molecule abundant in interstellar space and familiar on Earth as a common cleaning agent, astronomers mapped the rotating disk of gas and dust swirling around HW2. The results, soon to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, confirm that colossal stars that are hundreds of times the mass of our sun grow in the same fundamental way as smaller stars: by gathering gas from swirling gas disks. "We are always trying to get general rules that can explain the largest number of phenomena we observe," study leader Alberto Sanna, a researcher at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy, told "Our findings strongly support that the same physical processes, although scaled up, can form both stars like our sun as well as stars of tens of solar masses." The team made their observations in 2019 using the Very Large Array radio telescope network in New Mexico. By tracking the signature of ammonia molecules, which glow brightly at radio wavelengths, the researchers were able to peer through the dense cocoon of dust that obscures visible light and "look as close as possible to the star," said Sanna. The data revealed that gas from HW2's accretion disk is collapsing inward at breakneck speed, feeding the star at an astonishing rate — equivalent to about two Jupiter masses per year, one of the highest stellar growth rates ever recorded. How HW2's evolution unfolds will depend in part on what's happening in its immediate environment, said Sanna. The team's observations show a clear imbalance in the gas distribution within the star's accretion disk: the eastern side contains roughly twice as much gas as the western side and also shows signs of greater turbulence. This asymmetry suggests the disk may be receiving an external injection of material, potentially funneled in by a nearby filament-like stream of gas and dust, according to the new study. Related Stories: — The Very Large Array: 40 years of groundbreaking radio astronomy — Jupiter: A guide to the largest planet in the solar system — Stars: Facts about stellar formation, history and classification This interpretation supports growing evidence that such streamers can connect young stars to their surrounding envelopes, acting as cosmic supply lines and delivering fresh material to the accretion disk to sustain star growth. Sanna and his team cannot yet directly image these streamers that may be feeding HW2, but the new study offers testable predictions that future observations can use to search for them, the researcher said. "We need to understand for how long HW2 can keep growing," he added.
