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purplecthulhu ([personal profile] purplecthulhu) wrote2024-12-20 07:26 pm
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Making stars like Christmas puds

Prompted by a (now past) PhD student saying 'I'd like to do some polarisation observations with the SMA', we ended up with some rather interesting results which are reported today in a press release by the Royal Astronomical Society:

https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-highlights/clever-trick-cook-stars-christmas-puds-detected-first-time

I'm not sure if the analogy of a magnetic field holding gas together against the expansion pressure of hot young stars acting like the weights on a pressure cooker is that good, but it earned us a spot in the Christmas season press briefings.