"The RCW 38 observation doesn't agree with the conventional picture," said Scott Wolk of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA, lead author of an Astrophysical Journal Letters paper that described the findings earlier this month. "The data show that somehow extremely high-energy electrons are being produced there, although it is not clear how."

Electrons accelerated to energies of trillions of volts are required to account for the observed X-ray spectrum of the gas cloud surrounding the ensemble of stars, according to a statement issued with the findings. As these electrons move in the magnetic field that threads the cluster, they produce X-rays.

The electrons might have been produced by an exploding star, called a supernova, that faded away thousands of years ago. In such an event, a shock wave or a rapidly rotating and very dense neutron star, produced by the catastrophe, could be acting in concert with other energized stellar winds to produce the high-energy electrons.

"Regardless of the origin of the energetic electrons," said Wolk, "their presence would change the chemistry of protostellar disks in ways that could still be manifest billions of years later."

An example might be found in our own solar system, which is about 4.6 billion years old. There is evidence here for certain short-lived radioactive nuclides that imply the existence of a high-energy process. If our solar system was immersed for a time in a sea of energetic particles, this could explain the rare nuclides present in meteorites found on the Earth today.

RCW 38 is 6,000 light years from Earth and is one of the nearest star-forming regions with very young, hot stars.

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