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Scientists Use Ultrasound To Read The Heartbeats Of Young Stars

This article is more than 9 years old.

Something as seemingly simple as determining the age of a star has challenged astronomers for years, but now researchers reckon they’ve found the answer in the same technology we use to monitor our own young – ultrasounds.

The life cycle of a star is a complex thing. They’re most often born in clusters as molecular clouds of gas and dust particles contract. The bits and pieces of the star pull slowly together under gravity until eventually the gravitational pull causes it to get small and hot enough for its core to start the nuclear burning of hydrogen. At this point, the star is considered an adult and can stay in this stable form for vast periods of time.

But it’s hard to tell what stage it’s at in the previous years of existence, when it was just a smaller or larger cloud. Knowing which molecular cloud the star comes from can only give scientists a vague idea of its age, but listening to its “heartbeat” could help them pin things down.

The acoustic vibrations produced by the baby star can be measured using ultrasound technology similar to what we use in medicine. These sound waves are produced by radiation pressure inside the stars and they change over the stellar body’s lifetime.

"Our data shows that the youngest stars vibrate slower while the stars nearer to adulthood vibrate faster. A star's mass has a major impact on its development: stars with a smaller mass evolve slower. Heavy stars grow faster and age more quickly," said Dr. Konstanze Zwintz, lead author and postdoc at KU Leuven’s Institute for Astronomy in Belgium.

Although theoretical physicists have already suggested that young stars vibrate differently, this study is the first to confirm the theory by examining 34 stars aged under ten million years and sized between one and four times the mass of our Sun.

Using data from the Canadian Space Agency’s MOST satellite and the French CoRoT mission, the researchers have figured out more of the internal structures and ages of baby stars.

"Think of it as ultrasound of stellar embryos," said University of British Professor Jaymie Matthews, MOST Mission Scientist and a co-author of the study. "We detect the sound vibrations across the vacuum of space by the subtle changes in stellar brightness. Then we translate the frequencies of those vibrations into models of the structures of those stars' hidden interiors."

These models and further study of young stars will help scientists to understand more about the birth of our Sun and its life.

"We now have a model that more precisely measures the age of young stars," said Zwintz. "And we are now also able to subdivide young stars according to their various life phases."

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