Thousands of stars forming in the cloud of gas and dust in the Orion nebula.
Sometimes a play is the best research. One of my groups scientific interests is the formation of stars. It's a good place to be right now because, with so much new data pouring in, the assembly of stars (and planets) constitutes one of the great frontiers of modern astronomy. In the last 15 years we have discovered hundreds of planets orbiting other stars. As the census of new planets grows the paired questions of how solar systems form and evolve has taken on a new urgency. Life will form on planets and planets will form around stars. But where, and how, do stars form? The best way for a non-astronomer to learn about this question might be by just fooling around.
"Star Formation: The Game" is the fruit of a year long collaboration between DISCOVER magazine, the University of Rochester, the National Science Foundation, as well as my good friends at Second Avenue Software. It's part of our effort to change the way people encounter the fruits of science. Lets face it, most ideas in science are about dynamics — forces driving changes that occur in time and space. Words are fine for explaining these ideas but they have their limits. Better to see those forces at work right before your eyes and have some control over them.
The story of this game begins with the story of astronomers understanding of star formation. For more than thirty years they have been working hard to develop an accurate picture of single star formation. The basic idea begins with the gravitational collapse of one of the many (relatively) dense large interstellar clouds floating around the galaxy. Huge progress has been made articulating the theory and it does a great job of explaining much of what we see when we train our telescopes on relatively isolated regions of single star formation. The understanding that was gained with this dance of data and theory was a huge achievement, but it was only the first step. With better telescopes operating at longer cloud-penetrating wavelengths, it has became clear that star formation is a family affair — dysfunctional families. Exploring the metaphorical yelling and screaming that accompany "clustered star formation" is what the game all about.
Most star-forming clouds produce hundreds or thousands of stars. A few of these will be massive giant stars that are 10 times (or more) heavier than the sun. These high-mass stars live fast and die hard, producing torrents of UV radiation, powerful stellar winds and, finally, apocalyptic self-immolation in the form of a supernova. All this energy is dumped back into the same cloud from which the massive star formed—a process called "feedback."
Its not entirely clear yet what feedback means for young stars. In some cases it can be good news or bad news for sibling stars. The cloud might be destroyed which will keep new star formation from occurring. Gas in the cloud might, on the other hand, be swept together creating the next generation of stars. It is not clear yet which side of the feedback process is more important as there is a competition between cloud destruction and new star formation. Given all this creation, destruction and competition it seemed like this topic was a perfect subject for competitive science-based video game?
"Star Formation: The Game" allows you to explore the specific astronomical processes surrounding stellar birth in very non-traditional way. You drop new stars into a cloud that then go supernova. The goal is to try and corral the cloud gas with these blast waves, sweeping material together so it becomes dense enough to form new stars before the whole cloud is blown away. Of course, if you want your science served in a more traditional manner, you can shoot over to a story I wrote about star formation and feedback in DISCOVER's 2009 February issue that accompanies the game.
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