Why do protostars emit jets?

154 views

Why do protostars emit jets?

In: 4

Anonymous 0 Comments

These objects have a lot of infalling material surrounding them, and as this material swirls around and falls in towards the center it grinds up against other pulverized material in the disk.

This generates so much heat in the accretion disk that the material is likely hotter than the star’s own surface, and this swirling mass of plasma generates a powerful magnetic field.

This furiously rotating magnetic field accelerates some of the most highly charged particles into polar jets.

Baby stars generate baby jets that can launch material out of the solar system. The same phenomenon on a cosmically massive scale can occur around supermassive black holes and generate galaxy-scale polar jets.