IIST team leads a scientific discovery: First glimpse of magnetismnear an infant massive star
An international team led by astronomers from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, India, have made a remarkable discovery. Radio emission with a special property known as circular polarization (shown in the schematic image as twisted light beam) has been detected near a massive, young forming star.The new data allowed researchers to infer the magnetic field near the protostar to be about 20–35 Gauss, roughly 100 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field. The detection supports a long-standing theory: that powerful jets from stars and black holes are driven by the same magnetic engine. Mr. Amal George Cheriyan is a PhD student under Prof. Sarita Vig at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, India. They carried out this work in collaboration with Prof. Nirupam Roy from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, India, Prof. Samir Mandal, IIST, and other scientists from the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico, and Instituto de Astronomıa Teorica y Experimental (IATE) of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC) Córdoba, Argentina.
The article published in Astrophysical Journal Letters can be accessed from the link- https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ade99b
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