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An Adolescent Growth Spurt In Young Stars Helps Giant Planets Form

This is the famous Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, as imaged by the JWST. It's a dramatic view of thousands of young stars forming in the cold gas that makes up the Pillars. They're not visible, but each star is surrounded by a protoplanetary disk in which planets are forming. New research shows that young stars experience growth spurts in their later stages, rapidly accreting material from these disks. Counterintuitively, that aids the formation of gas giants like Jupiter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Anton Koekemoer (STScI)

Intermediate mass stars experience periods of rapid growth in their late stages of formation. The growing young star emits more radiation that encourages greater accretion. Rather than depleting their protoplanetary disks and preventing gas giants from forming, the opposite is true.



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