NASA's space telescope Spitzer have observed olivine falling down like rain on a burgeoning star, it was announced on Thursday.
This is the first time such crystals have been
observed in the dusty clouds of gas that collapse around forming stars,
according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Spitzer's infrared detectors spotted the crystal
rain around a distant, sun-like embryonic star, or protostar, referred
to as HOPS-68, in the constellation Orion, said JPL in Pasadena, Los
Angeles.
In the form of forsterite, the crystals belong to
the olivine family of silicate minerals and can be found everywhere
from a periodot gemstone to the green sand beaches of Hawaii to remote
galaxies, JPL said.
NASA's Stardust and Deep Impact missions both detected the crystals in their close-up studies of comets.
Astronomers are still debating how the crystals got
there, but the most likely culprits are jets of gas blasting away from
the embryonic star.
"You need temperatures as hot as lava to make these
crystals," said Tom Megeath of the University of Toledo in Ohio, the
principal investigator of the research and the second author of a new
study appearing in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We propose that the
crystals were cooked up near the surface of the forming star, then
carried up into the surrounding cloud where temperatures are much
colder, and ultimately fell down again like glitter." Xinhua
