A Hole In Stars?

From 2006 via the NSF Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak, Herbig-Haro object HH 555 in the Pelican Nebula. A tiny singularity colliding with a gas cloud would trail a pillar of gas like a bullet fired through cotton candy. At the pillar's tip, gas is drawn into a disk which will form a protostar. At the top and bottom two bright jets spiral along magnetic field lines. These are the telltale signs of a Black Hole.

In the November 26 issue of SCIENCE, astronomers reported the first direct evidence of magnetic field in the jet from an infant star. Such jets are known to occur in three places: from the supermassive Black Holes at the cores of galaxies, from smaller Black Holes consuming material, and finally from infant stars. Using the NSF very Large Array, the astronomers studied IRAS 18162-2048, a young star 5500 light years from Earth. "Our discovery gives a strong hint that all three types of jets originate through a common process," said astronomer Carlos Carrasco-Gonzalez.

The "Angular Momentum Problem" has been another puzzle of astrophysics. Since the time of Pierre Laplace, scientists have believed that stars collapse from rotating disks of gas. If the disk angular momentum were conserved, a star would spin itself apart before igniting. Where does the angular momentum go? One big clue is the powerful jets seen erupting from infant stars. The jets follow magnetic field lines, as if angular momentum were powering huge electric dynamoes.

Findings like this will someday indicate that all stars, including our Sun, begin with small Black Holes. Presence of a Black Hole would explain the magnetic field and twin jets. It would also solve the Angular Momentum Problem and explain how our Sun could collapse from duffuse gas in the first place. As this blog has suggested since 2006, a Black Hole could exist in the second last place humans would think to look, inside our Sun.