{"id":5712,"date":"2013-04-27T19:25:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T19:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/?p=5712"},"modified":"2014-12-02T08:27:03","modified_gmt":"2014-12-02T08:27:03","slug":"the-formation-of-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/the-formation-of-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"The Formation of Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overview:\u00a0 How Stars Are Made<\/strong><\/p>\n

Astronomers and physicists have theorized that stellar formation happens when clouds of gas and interstellar dust collapse, molecules of hydrogen attract one another, and nuclear fusion generates energy and heat.\u00a0 During the process, these young stars are very faint, with energy near the infrared spectrum.\u00a0 Eventually, when nuclear fusion is better established, most of the energy from conversion of hydrogen to helium generates visible light.<\/p>\n

What Conditions Are Necessary?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In order for clouds of gas and dust to form into stars, several well-known physical characteristics need to be present.\u00a0 The gas cloud must be very large and dense enough to collapse under gravity.\u00a0 If it is too small or spread out, there won’t be enough attraction between molecules to cause the collapse.\u00a0 The theory is that, even for the smallest stars, the cloud must be ten thousand times the mass of our Sun.\u00a0 The temperature must be correct, and there must be enough dust to facilitate the process. \u00a0Clouds of gas and dust like the Orion Nebula have the right conditions for young stars to form, a process that can take tens of thousands of years.<\/p>\n

A Secret Process<\/strong><\/p>\n

Several circumstances make the process of stellar formation hard to observe.\u00a0 The young stars are very small and faint, and most of the energy that radiates from them is not visible.\u00a0 It is in the part of the spectrum that has very long waves of infrared light.\u00a0 Most of those waves are blocked by the atmosphere of Earth itself.\u00a0 As gravity spins clouds of gas and dust into stars, an opaque shell makes the process difficult to see.\u00a0 By the time the surrounding cloud is burned away from the protostar, ongoing nuclear fusion \u00a0creates visible light.<\/p>\n

The Role of Space Telescopes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Telescopes in space from NASA and Europe are not blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, so scientists have been able to observe many details about the universe than ever before.\u00a0 Some of the new observations of the Orion Nebula show many protostars at earlier stages of development.\u00a0 Long before nuclear fusion begins inside the cloud of gas, they contract and expand, sometimes changing size in just a few weeks.\u00a0 Scientists think that lumps of material form to cause short-term flares.<\/p>\n

Spectrometers in Space<\/strong><\/p>\n

The newest observations in 2013 from space telescopes and the spectrometers aboard them show \u00a0many bright infrared stars in early development.\u00a0 They pick up light waves that are as wide as a human hair, still in the invisible infrared range.\u00a0 That period of a star’s life may only last around 25,000 years, rather than the billions of years that energy comes mostly from nuclear fusion.<\/p>\n

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Overview:\u00a0 How Stars Are Made Astronomers and physicists have theorized that stellar formation happens when clouds of gas and interstellar dust collapse, molecules of hydrogen attract one another, and nuclear fusion generates energy and heat.\u00a0 During the process, these young stars are very faint, with energy near the infrared spectrum.\u00a0 Eventually, when nuclear fusion is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16],"tags":[1210,1266,1440,1701],"class_list":["post-5712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-science","tag-nuclear-fusion","tag-orion-nebula","tag-protostars","tag-space-telescopes"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}