Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have observed a strange stellar phenomenon for the first time ever: A group of baby stars painting the walls of their nursery in seemingly coordinated jets of high-speed gas. And strangely, they are all pointing in the same direction.
This messy discovery presents the first direct image of a long-studied phenomenon called protostellar outflows — huge jets of gas released by newborn stars, which collide with and charge material in the molecular gas clouds that surround them. But it also reveals a baffling new mystery: Why do many of the newly discovered jets appear to be aligned in the exact same direction, despite coming from widely separated stars?
