Astronomers have made a remarkable observation about protostars – the earliest stage of a star’s life cycle. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, astronomers have discovered that protostars are able to ‘siphon’ off material from their surrounding environment in order to fuel their growth. This process, known as accretion, is the same mechanism that powers stars throughout their lives, and it appears to start much earlier than previously thought. This accretion process may even play an important role in the formation of planets.

This new understanding of protostars could have far-reaching implications for our understanding of how stars and planets form. The ALMA observations provide a unique window into the earliest stages of star formation and show that stars begin to feed off their environment much earlier than thought. This suggests that accretion plays an important role in the formation of planets as well.

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source: Phys.org