Birth of a star. (Insight).(Brief Article)

A STAR IS BORN: This visualization, from a sequence depicting how our sun was created in a massive nebula of dust and gas, can be seen in a 23-minute animation called "The Search for Life: Are We Alone?" that premiered in March at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium in New York. Created by Dave Nadean at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the sequence shows how interstellar matter swirls and condenses into clumps over hundreds of millions of years. As a clump grows in size and density, so do the pressures and temperatures at its core, until hydrogen ...