Explosive Disintegration of a Massive Young Stellar System in Orion

In this talk, I will present the results of recent millimeter
observations made with the Submillimeter Array that indicate the
well-known enigmatic wide-angle outflow located in the Orion BN/KL
star-forming region to have been produced by such a violent explosion
during the disruption of a massive young stellar system, and that this
was caused by a close dynamical interaction about 500 years ago.
This outflow thus belongs to a totally different family of molecular
flows that is not related to the classical bipolar flows that are
generated by stars during their formation process.
These observations further confirmed that young massive stars in the
center of crowded star clusters have close dynamical encounters that led
energetic, and explosive events. Additionally, our molecular data
allowed us to create a three-dimensional view of the debris flow and to
link this directly to the well-known Orion H2 "fingers" farther out.
Finally, I will discuss very briefly the relevance of these observations
in the context of the formation of massive stars.