General Astronomy/Protostars and Stellar Nurseries
This page may need to be The Birth of Protostars
Protostars are formed in star nurseries called nebulas, while nebulas are areas of higher dust and gas densities relative to the surrounding interstellar space. [1] Nebulas are made up of mostly hydrogen and a little helium, although more massive elements and even molecules are also ubiquitous. These more massive elements and molecules are from previous stars that have dead and scattered some of there remnants into the nebula. These clouds of gas and dust can span hundreds of light years across and can be formed when enough gas and dust come together to become gravitationally bound or can be formed by the explosion of stars known as planetary nebulas. [2] If the nebula has a high density perturbation of gas and dust in then gravitational contraction may become significant. If gravity becomes significant enough to pull in the dust and gas from the cloud then the material trapped by gravity will collapse into itself, this is how a protostar is formed. [3] When gravity takes over and causes the material of the nebula to collapse in on its self this forms a sort of ball that will start to rotate. This rotation will cause gas and dust outside of the ball to start to rotate towards the ball, like when the drain of a tub is opened and all the rubber ducks at the other side of the tub will start to move towards the drain then they will get caught in the whirlpool and then finally sucked down the drain. This is how a protostar increases its mass; a protostar will start out as the small ball that begins to rotate (this can be thought of as the drain) as this ball rotates it will create an accretion disk (the whirlpool around the drain) this disk will suck dust and gas from the surrounding nebula and transfer it to the protostar. How fast this process happens can help determine the outcome of the new star. This process will stop when the protostar starts nuclear fusion of hydrogen. During the formation of the protostar and during the accretion process described above the protostar becomes hotter and denser. The protostar becomes denser because the accretion disk is adding material to the star which is causing the gravity of the protostar to increase, thereby “pushing” the gas and dust from the accretion disk closer and closer towards the center of the protostar. This effect is correlated to the temperature of the protostar, as the density of the star increases the temperature increase. When the temperature at the center of the protostar reaches about 10^6 degrees Celsius it will start to fuse hydrogen. [1] This is the start of the proton proton chain that is the main fusion that supports the star and signifies the birth of a new star. The burning of hydrogen produces a solar wave that will blow the accretion disk away from the star causing no new material to be added to the new star.[3]
Simple Model of Protostar Formation
Above is a description of the formation of new stars. We will not look at the early physics used to describe protostar creation. The first person to study protostars was Sir James Jeans; he studied globules and molecular clouds where protostar formation has been observed. Sir Jeans studied what conditions are needed in a molecular cloud or globule to induce collapse of material to form a protostar. During Jeans life time (1877-1946) the advanced computational powers of computers were not available so he had to simplify his calculations. The major simplifications Jeans made before he began his analysis was to assume that the effects of rotation, turbulence, and magnetic fields can be neglected. These assumptions are not true but Jeans calculations give a good starting point. Jeans started with the Virial Theorem, 2K+U=0 equation 1 This theorem states that the total potential energy (U) of gravity is twice the absolute value of the total kinetic energy (K) of the system and when the two add to zero then the system is in equilibrium. This can explain when the cloud will collapse or expand. If the kinetic energy of the cloud is more than half of the potential energy then the cloud will expand and if two times the kinetic energy is less than the cloud will collapse. We can write the potential energy as,
U= -(3/5)(GM2/R) equation 2
And kinetic energy can be written as,
K= (3MkT)/(μmH) equation 3
where,
μ= mean molecular weight
T= temperature
M= mass of cloud
mH= is mass of hydrogen
R= the radius of the cloud
G and k= gravitational constant and Boltzmann’s constant
rewriting R as,
R= [(3M)/(4πρ)]1/3 equation 4
ρ= the initial mass density of the cloud assumed to be constant throughout the cloud
Sir Jeans then substituted the R equation into the Potential energy equation and then put both energy equations into the virial theorem and solving for the mass he found the minimum mass required for a cloud to collapse. This is called the Jeans mass and he found the minimum radius by placing the equation for R into the Jeans mass equation and solving this is called the Jeans length. If the cloud has a mass or radius larger than the values found by these equations then the cloud will collapse.
MJ= [(5kT)/(GμmH)]3/2[3/(4πρ)]1/2 equation 5
RJ= [(15kT)/(4πGμmHρ)]1/2 equation 6
This was the first theoretical attempt to model the formation of a protostar. These equations give us good approximations of what molecular clouds will be able to form protostars. But observations of forming protostars and of molecular clouds show that the equations that Sir Jeans developed are not always true.[4]>
Constraining factors to Sir James Jeans Model
The preceding section explained Sir Jeans’s model for the formation of protostars from the surrounding molecular clouds. Observations of molecular clouds and protostars have shown that this model is flawed. The model predicts that the entire cloud will collapse into the forming protostar; also the model predicts that if the mass or radius is higher than the Jeans mass or Jeans radius, than the cloud will collapse and form protostars. Astronomers have found molecular clouds and globules that do not follow this model very well. Observations have been made on globules and molecular clouds that have many stars forming in them and on others that are above the Jeans mass or Jeans radius and do not have a lot of protostar activity in them. Many astronomers have tried to determine what is wrong with the model and have found reasons to explain the observations made that contradict the model. One reason found was that the simplifications made by Sir Jeans could not be left out and that by including some of these previously excluded variables astronomers found that the model fit more closely to what they observed. Some of the variables that were excluded in Jeans model were cloud rotation, the presence of a magnetic field, temperature changes, mass density changes, external gas pressure, and fragmentation.[4]
Example
Let us look at a diffused hydrogen cloud. Assume that the temperature is 50K and that the cloud is completely hydrogen with a density of 8.4x10-19 kg/m3, and take µ to be 1. Then what is the minimum mass necessary to cause the cloud to collapse. Using equation 5 from above with the given values we find that the mass necessary for collapse is roughly 1500 solar masses. The normal diffused hydrogen cloud ranges in mass from 1-100 solar masses therefore the cloud is stable since the Jeans Mass calculated above is greater than the mass of the cloud.[4]
Now let’s look at what happens in the center of a dense giant molecular cloud (GMC). The typical temperatures for this cloud is 10K and we will take the density to be 3x10^-17kg/m3 and take µ to be 2. Again using equation 5 we find that the Jeans Mass is now only 8 solar masses. GMCs are approximately 10 solar masses. We can now reason that GMC cores are unstable. Consequently they will form stars because the Jeans Mass is lower than the mass of the cloud. This has been proven by astronomers through observations of GMCs in our night sky.[4]
[edit] References
- ↑ a b Think Quest. Life cycle of stars., 2009, from http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/star/star.html.
- ↑ Bill Arnett. (1997). Types of nebulae., 2009, from http://astro.nineplanets.org/twn/types.html.
- ↑ a b Linda Hermans-Killam. The infrared universe., 2009, from http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/ir_tutorial/sform.html
- ↑ a b Ostlie, D. A., & Carroll, B. W. (2007). In Black A. R. S. (Ed.), An introduction to modern stellar astrophysics (2nd ed.)San Francisco: Addison-Wesley.
