2006/09/01 by M. T. Beltrán, Maria T. Beltran, R. Cesaroni +8 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxy #Interstellar medium #Physics #Star formation #Stars #Stellar evolution #Stellar mass #Stellar mass loss #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Supernova #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nature05074
published as Nature 443 (2006) 427-429 · 11 pages, 2 figures
openalex publication_date 2006/09/01 · arxiv created 2006/09/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Theory predicts and observations confirm that low-mass stars (like the Sun) in their early life grow by accreting gas from the surrounding material. But for stars ~ 10 times more massive than the Sun (~10 Msun), the powerful stellar radiation is expected to inhibit accretion and thus limit the growth of their mass. Clearly, stars with masses >10 Msun exist, so there must be a way for them to form. The problem may be solved by non-spherical accretion, which allows some of the stellar photons to escape along the symmetry axis where the density is lower. The recent detection of rotating disks and toroids around very young massive stars has lent support to the idea that high-mass (> 8 Msun) stars could form in this way. Here we report observations of an ammonia line towards a high-mass star forming region. We conclude from the data that the gas is falling inwards towards a very young star of ~20 Msun, in line with theoretical predictions of non-spherical accretion.