Stars form when vast clouds of cold gas in space collapse under their own gravity. But not all gas collapses, and not all clouds form stars equally efficiently. A long-standing puzzle in astrophysics is what controls this process ' and a leading suspect has been the role of magnetic fields, which thread through interstellar gas like an invisible scaffolding. A new open-access study led by researchers at MIT Haystack Observatory, published in The Astrophysical Journal, has now traced this scaffolding in unprecedented detail in DR21, one of the most active stellar nurseries within 5,000 light-years of the sun. The results show that magnetic fields don't simply exist in DR21 ' they actively shape how material flows into the cloud's dense central spine, where new massive stars are being born. "The magnetic field acts like a set of railroad tracks," says Thushara Pillai, research scientist at MIT Haystack Observatory and lead author of the study. "Gas flows along the tracks toward the...
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