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posted by mrpg on Friday February 08 2019, @07:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the dark-matter dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Novel experiment validates widely speculated mechanism behind the formation of stars

The theory holds that MRI[*] allows accretion disks, clouds of dust, gas, and plasma that swirl around growing stars and planets as well as black holes, to collapse into them. According to the theory, this collapse happens because turbulent swirling plasma, technically known as "Keplerian flows," gradually grows unstable within a disk. The instability causes angular momentum -- the process that keeps orbiting planets from being drawn into the sun -- to decrease in inner sections of the disk, which then fall into celestial bodies.

Unlike orbiting planets, the matter in dense and crowded accretion disks may experience forces such as friction that cause the disks to lose angular momentum and be drawn into the objects they swirl around. However, such forces cannot fully explain how quickly matter must fall into larger objects for planets and stars to form on a reasonable timescale.

[*] MRI: Magnetorotational instability.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09 2019, @03:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09 2019, @03:12PM (#798832)

    How much dark matter was used for these simulastions?