They are among the most horrible natural disasters known to man, laying waste to anything they touch. They’re virtually unstoppable, too. Many even call the natural disaster the veritable Finger of God when the Almighty decides to touch a part of the Earth with such force that earthquakes even quake in fear.
They’re called tornadoes.
Would you be surprised, however, to know that twisters happen in places other than our planet? How about space?
Well, it’s true; right in NASA, physicist Giovanni Fazio has spotted just that: an interstellar twister. Imagine the force and power of a tornado blasting the ground…only in space. However, it’s not exactly the same concept.
A regular twister simply forms by natural design, and it’s only purpose is destruction; there’s no real benefit. But a tornado in space may be the very first steps in the formation of stars. What Fazio saw in NASA’s Spitzer Infrared Telescope was a shock wave of interstellar debris smashing into a gas-and-dust cloud at literally 100 miles per second, heating the cloud and causing it to glow like a comet. That is, in effect, how a star is born.
Beginning yet another revolution of up-to-date research is the wonderful norm to the findings of time and space, and this is definitely no exception. The beautiful simplicity in the discovery of this interstellar twister may be the precursor to finally understanding just how the universe itself works. It is amazing that you can learn something so phenomenal as that from nothing more than a simple tornado!