A 10,000 year old explosion in DR21

Abstract

Sensitive high angular resolution (∼2″) CO(2-1) line observations made with the Submillimeter Array of the flow emanating from the high-mass star-forming region DR21 located in the Cygnus X molecular cloud are presented. These new interferometric observations indicate that this well known enigmatic outflow appears to have been produced by an explosive event that took place about 10,000 years ago, and that might be related to the disintegration of a massive stellar system such as the one that occurred in Orion Becklin-Neugebauer/Kleinman-Low 500 years ago, but about 20 times more energetic. This result therefore argues in favor of the idea that the disintegration of young stellar systems perhaps is a frequent phenomenon present during the formation of massive stars. However, many more theoretical and observational studies are still needed to confirm our hypothesis. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.