THERE鈥橲 a nursery out there, and the babies are crying. NASA鈥檚 Chandra X-ray
Observatory picked up some ear-splitting cries from infant stars in a part of
the sky called Rho Ophiuchi. Some of the baby stars observed by
Yohko Tsuboi and her team at Pennsylvania State University generate X-ray flares
tens of thousands of times as energetic as flares from our own Sun.
鈥淚t鈥檚 very puzzling how these stars could show so much activity at such a
young age,鈥� says Andrea Dupree of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics. These stars are less than a hundred thousand years old, equivalent
to one week in a human lifespan, and nuclear fusion hasn鈥檛 started in their
cores. So why all the noise?
Norbert Schulz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says the stars鈥�
rapid rotation and strong magnetic fields may be responsible, though the details
have still to be worked out. 鈥淭here are many puzzles here,鈥� says Dupree.
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