What Is Star Formation?

The material of stars comes from the nebula. Each nebula is the cradle of stars, with millions of stars. The important material in the nebula is not those brilliant gas clouds, but the darker part, which contains many dust clouds. Star formation occurs in these dust clouds. These dust clouds are very dense, so in general, it is difficult for us to observe some internal processes with ordinary telescopes. The question of how stars are formed has become a mystery in astronomy.

Star formation

The basic conditions for producing stars are hydrogen, gravity and long time.

nebula

At first, a small piece of hydrogen in the nebula began to heat up, which caused other substances in the nebula to heat up, heat up and emit light. Dust and gas begin to gather under the effect of gravity, forming a huge vortex. During the process of aggregating and compressing the volume, the temperature of the compressed gas will increase due to the work done by the outside world according to the first law of thermodynamics.

After hundreds of thousands of years, the density of the nebula will continue to increase, and disk-shaped vortices will form, exceeding the diameter of the solar system. The gas in the center, under the constant pressure of gravity, forms a sphere with ultra-high density and temperature. As the pressure increases, the huge momentum of the vortex material causes a huge gas column to be ejected from the center. The diameter of the spray gas column can reach several light years, which can accelerate the material and travel through unimaginable distances. The core part is the young star.

The gravitational effect is continuous and strong, and the gas and dust particles are continuously sucked in and squeezed each other, generating more and more heat.

Jet gas column

Over the next few hundred thousand years, young stars will become brighter and hotter when squeezed, and the temperature will reach 15 million degrees Celsius. Some gas atoms will fuse at high temperature to release more energy. After these fusion reactions, the products will form a clearer sphere through interaction with gas and dust, and a star is born.

In the next tens, hundreds, billions, or even trillions of years, it will always emit light and release energy. The sun is such an ordinary but important star that has provided light and heat to our planet and the entire solar system for billions of years.