Star Formation Breaks Its Own Rules at the Centre of the Milky Way
European Space Agency
A vast new radio telescope mosaic of the galaxy’s turbulent core is forcing astronomers to rethink where and why stars form — and has already thrown up one object nobody can explain.
Cold gas streams through the heart of the Milky Way in ribbons and filaments, feeding on itself, crashing into dense clumps, occasionally igniting a star — and mostly, for reasons nobody properly understands, not doing so. This is the Central Molecular Zone, the inner hundred light-years of our galaxy, packed with..