Can Stars Create Crystals?
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The illustration on the left is an artist’s idea of how silicate crystals could be created by a growing star. Crystals like this are often found in comets. The image shows a young sun-like star encircled by its planet-forming disk of dust and gas. The silicate that makes up most of the dust would have begun as non-crystallised particles with no structure.
As material transfers from the disk onto the star, its mass increases, t brightens and heats up dramatically. The resulting outburst causes temperatures to rise in the star’s surrounding area.
When the material in the disk warms from the star’s outburst, the particles of silicate melt. As they cool off, they transform into forsterite (see inset), a type of silicate crystal often found in comets in our solar system.
In April 2008, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope detected evidence of this process taking place on the disk of a young sun-like star called EX Lupi.
Tags: Accretion disks, Crystals, Forsterite