THE discovery of a growing star that is already 20 times as massive as the sun has shed light on a long-standing mystery about just how large newborn stars can get.
Small stars such as our sun form when clouds of gas collapse under the force of gravity, creating enough pressure to trigger nuclear fusion. Theory suggests that the radiation generated by fusion, once the star reaches about 10 solar masses, would blow away the surrounding gas, halting the star’s growth. So astrophysicists assumed that giant stars only form when smaller stars collide.
Now Rolf Chini of Ruhr University in…
