NASA's Hubble Space Telescope finds spiraling stars, set to reveal secrets of early universe

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Very little is known about the early universe. Many secrets have remained hidden from human observation despite the Herculean effort of space agencies. As continuous research and observations are being made by the scientists and researchers, more exciting things are popping up. And now with the help of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have observed stars spiralling into the centre of a huge stellar nursery named NGC 346. It is being said that these observations will help unveil more clues about our early universe. Sounds exciting right?

"Nature likes spirals – from the whirlpool of a hurricane, to pinwheel-shaped protoplanetary disks around newborn stars, to the vast realms of spiral galaxies across our universe. Now astronomers are bemused to find young stars that are spiraling into the center of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way," NASA said in a report.

According to the information provided by NASA about the spiraling stars, the outer arm of the spiral may be feeding star formation in a river-like motion of gas and stars. This is an efficient way to fuel star birth, researchers say. The Small Magellanic Cloud has a simpler chemical composition than the Milky Way, making it similar to the galaxies found in the younger universe, when heavier elements were more scarce. Because of this, the stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud burn hotter and so run out of their fuel faster than in our Milky Way.

"Though a proxy for the early universe, at 200,000 light-years away the Small Magellanic Cloud is also one of our closest galactic neighbors. Learning how stars form in the Small Magellanic Cloud offers a new twist on how a firestorm of star birth may have occurred