Stars are born when giant clouds of gas and dust break apart and collapse. And if that’s all there was to it, the Milky Way Galaxy would give birth to a couple of hundred stars every year. Instead, thanks to feedback from the stars themselves, it makes only a few.

Feedback is a process that clears away the material for making stars, but can also trigger the birth of more stars.

Young stars, for example, produce winds and jets that blow away the gas and dust around them. Since stars are born in clusters, many youngsters can be sweeping away the star-making material at the same time. That pares back the number of stars that can be born in a cluster.

Mature stars add to the feedback – not only with winds, but also with radiation. Hot stars generate a lot of ultraviolet energy. It vaporizes tiny particles of dust – eliminating possible building blocks for new stars.

The heaviest stars explode as supernovas. These blasts can clear out the space for light-years around, creating big, empty bubbles. And supernovas also accelerate subatomic particles around them to almost the speed of light. These “cosmic rays” help to sweep away the raw material for making more stars.

But supernovas can also enhance the birth rate. Their shock waves can cause distant clouds of gas and dust to collapse to form stars. So feedback is a complex process – one that both aids and hinders the birth of new stars.

Script by Damond Benningfield