An international group of scientists from Russia (UrFU, SPbSU), China, Italy, and Taiwan has discovered how magnetic reconnection causes powerful flares in young massive stars. The work is supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 23-12-00258) and a state contract from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (No. FEUZ-2025-0003).
The scientists studied the protostar G36.11+0.55 using the TMRT (China), VLA, and ALMA (USA) radio telescopes. They established that the flares of maser radiation are associated with changes in the magnetic field. Observations showed a clear relationship between the enhancement of CH₃OH maser radiation and changes in the magnetic field. Masers are microwave "lasers."
According to our model, a flare is like a short circuit in the region between a young star and its surrounding gas-dust disk. It occurs when the magnetic fields of the star and the disk collide, creating a current that heats the gas to millions of degrees.
The flare at G36 lasted 90 days and released energy ~10³⁹ erg — this is 170 billion times more than the annual energy consumption of humanity (6 × 10²⁷ erg in 2023) or a million solar flares of type X1. A feature of the G36 case is the relatively low intensity of the flare with such a duration. The reason may be in the process of episodic accretion, when matter from the disk falls onto the star and transfers excess magnetic field to it.
Magnetic fields play a key role in star formation, acting as an energy reservoir for flares. Scientists plan to look for X-ray radiation in similar areas to confirm the hypothesis of magnetic reconnection.
I assume that — as on the Sun and in the vicinity of some black holes — magnetic reconnection in G36 and similar regions will lead to such strong heating that this region will emit X-rays. The search for X-ray radiation from the vicinity of young massive stars is a new and promising task that will allow us to test the hypothesis about the connection of maser radiation flares with magnetic reconnection near young massive stars.
Massive stars, despite their rarity, create heavy elements and influence the evolution of galaxies. The study, published in Nature Communications Physics, helps to understand how the largest stars in the Universe are formed.
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