2016/02/05 by Hauyu Baobab Liu, Michihiro Takami, M. Takami +14 · 96 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Brown dwarf #Circumstellar disk #Exoplanet #Optics #Physics #Planet #Protostar #Radiative transfer #Star formation #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Young stellar object #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/sciadv.1500875
published in Science Advances 2(2), e1500875 (American Association for the Advancement of Science) · 10 pages, 8 figures; revised version published by Science Advances
openalex publication_date 2016/02/05 · arxiv created 2016/02/12 · arxiv updated 2016/02/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Stars may not accumulate their mass steadily, as was previously thought, but in a series of violent events manifesting themselves as sharp stellar brightening. These events can be caused by fragmentation due to gravitational instabilities in massive gaseous disks surrounding young stars, followed by migration of dense gaseous clumps onto the star. Our high-resolution near-infrared imaging has verified the presence of the key associated features, large-scale arms and arcs surrounding four young stellar objects undergoing luminous outbursts. Our hydrodynamics simulations and radiative transfer models show that these observed structures can indeed be explained by strong gravitational instabilities occurring at the beginning of the disk formation phase. The effect of those tempestuous episodes of disk evolution on star and planet formation remains to be understood.