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Star formation

Three's a crowd

Nature volume 405, pages 405–407 (2000)Cite this article

An Erratum to this article was published on 15 June 2000

Looking at the night sky with the naked eye gives the impression that nearly all stars are single stars, much like our Sun. In reality, roughly half of these stars are binaries — two stars revolving around a common centre of mass. Studies of star formation have focused largely on single stars. In fact, the theory of how single stars form is so well developed and accepted that a ‘standard model’ for their formation has thrived for well over a decade1. However, startling new results presented at a meeting in Potsdam last monthFootnote 1 suggest that the star-formation process may only rarely lead directly to the formation of single protostars — instead, protostars and young stars appear to form primarily in groups of two or more, the latter of which could then disintegrate to produce single stars.

*The Formation of Binary Stars International Astronomical Union Symposium 200. Potsdam, Germany, 10–15 April 2000.

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Figure 1: Star rating.
Figure 2: Millimetre-wave image of a cluster of four young protostars in a nearby star-forming region, NGC1333.

Notes

  1. *The Formation of Binary Stars International Astronomical Union Symposium 200. Potsdam, Germany, 10–15 April 2000.

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  1. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5241 Broad Branch Road NW, Washington, DC, 20015-1305, USA

    Alan P. Boss

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  1. Alan P. Boss
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Correspondence to Alan P. Boss.

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Boss, A. Three's a crowd. Nature 405, 405–407 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35013174

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