Stars like the Sun are highly energetic objects capable of blasting the atmospheres of planets in their orbits before life has a chance to take hold, and a new study of a group of particularly young stars gives us a better understanding of how There is a process.
Chandra X-ray Observatory Magnetically active stars have been studied in the most in-depth manner to date, to see how the activity of these young stars can affect planet formation in their accretion disks, the mass around young stars that allows them to form planets. Supplies the materials needed for the bodies to grow.
To test this idea, the researchers used the telescope to look at about a dozen “open clusters,” totaling more than 6,000 young stars. Stars which formed around the same time, with an age of between 7 million and 25 million years, and the data were compared to earlier Chandra studies of stars as old as 500,000 years. These stars are a particularly strong source of X-rays that are produced by the intense magnetic fields generated by the inner dynamos of newborn stars.
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Because X-rays are bound by more magnetically active stars, researchers can measure X-ray levels at different ages to identify a continuous X-ray-brightness for the first several million years of a star’s life. which can be followed. by a sharp decline in magnetic activity between 7 million and 25 million years. The researchers found that the more massive the star, the more rapidly it decays.
In cases such as the open cluster NGC 3293, Can be seen in this picture of NASA released in December 2022stars are old enough that the internal convection zone that powers the dynamo that generates Magnetic Field Shrink or, in the case of larger stars, disappear altogether, taking the dynamo with it.
The study, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal In August 2022, it was found that the high X-ray and ultraviolet radiation from these particularly young stars completely cleared out the gas and dust in their accretion disks in very short order, allowing planets to grow around them. has stopped. What’s more, the hydrogen-rich atmospheres of the planets that do form are likely to wear away in a few million years unless they can produce a strong enough magnetic field of their own to beat the barrage, as in the case of our planet. is in the case.
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