The picture of star formation just got a little more complicated: Cosmic magnetic fields, which can channel condensing interstellar gas, play a more important role in the birth of stars that previously thought, a new study suggests.
The simplified story of stellar birth involves giant clouds of gas and dust collapsing inward due to gravity, growing denser and hotter until nuclear fusion ignites a newborn star.
But in reality, there's much more to the story: When a molecular cloud collapses, only a small fraction of the cloud's material forms stars, and scientists haven't been sure why that is.
Since gravity favors star formation because it draws material together, some other force must be hindering the process, scientists reason. The two leading candidates are turbulence and magnetic fields.
More: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090929-star-formation.html (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090929-star-formation.html)