There's a massive star nursery out there blasting 'fingers' of gas into space like a giant cosmic firework show.
arXiv · March 17, 2026 · 2603.15040
The Takeaway
Star formation is usually described as a slow, quiet gravitational collapse. This discovery reveals a nursery unleashing energy equivalent to a supernova, suggesting that the birth of massive stars can be just as violent as their deaths.
From the abstract
We present a study of the massive protocluster IRAS 15520$-$5234, which displays evidence of an explosive molecular outflow that unleashed a kinetic energy of at least 10$^{48}$ erg. The protocluster contains 16 dense cores detected in the ALMA band 6 continuum emission maps, having masses in the range from 0.2 to 11.0 M$_{\odot}$. Our analysis of CO $(2-1)$ emission reveals 28 well collimated outflow fingers, the majority of which follow a Hubble-Lemaître velocity law. The outflow fingers show