Israeli scientists have achieved a breakthrough once thought impossible, detecting cosmic rays deep inside a star-forming nebula and revealing the mechanics behind ongoing stellar creation. A team led by Shmuel Bialy used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe infrared signatures inside Barnard 68, a dense molecular cloud roughly 400 light-years away. These signals confirm that cosmic rays—high-energy particles born from dying stars—penetrate cold nebulae and actively regulate the birth of new ones. What was long dismissed as theoretically interesting but observationally unreachable has now been measured directly.

The discovery reshapes how scientists understand the lifecycle of stars. Cosmic rays ionize and heat dense clouds, drive chemical reactions, and delay gravitational collapse—setting the tempo for when and how stars ignite. In other words, stellar death fuels stellar birth in a continuous, self-sustaining process. Remarkably, this aligns with an ancient insight drawn from the Hebrew text of Genesis, where the creation of the stars is described differently than the sun and moon—suggesting not a finished act, but an ongoing one. Modern astrophysics has now observed what biblical sages inferred thousands of years ago through careful attention to language.

SOURCE: Israel365News