SIMULATING clouds of gas in space with foam balls and laser beams is helping us figure out how supernovae can stimulate star formation. These small-scale experiments could deepen our understanding of the formation of our own solar system, which may have been born in such a cloud.
Physicists think that molecular clouds – clumps of gas and dust – can become stellar nurseries when they interact with shock waves from supernovae. In theory, the shock waves stretch and squeeze the gas and create dense areas that can collapse into stars. However, this is hard to study from afar and in computer simulations.
One solution is to build models of these systems. Bruno Albertazzi at the École Polytechnique in Paris and his team used a sphere of carbon-hydrogen foam about a millimetre across…
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New Scientist (Digital) - 1 Issue, 23-Apr-22