What is the fundamental mechanism responsible for the birth of star-forming clouds?
Answer
Large-scale compression and subsequent cooling of ambient interstellar material
Star-forming clouds arise from the accumulation and compression of diffuse gas, followed by cooling, often triggered by shock waves or passage through spiral arms.
Related Questions
What gas makes up approximately three-quarters of the mass of molecular clouds?What physical state must molecular clouds typically maintain to allow gravity to overcome internal pressure?What is the fundamental mechanism responsible for the birth of star-forming clouds?What is the primary role of microscopic dust grains within a molecular cloud?What term describes the minimum mass a cloud requires to collapse under its own gravity at a given temperature and density?What force exerts pressure that specifically resists compression across magnetic field lines during cloud collapse?What specific process allows the majority component of gas (neutral particles) to decouple from magnetic field lines, thus enabling collapse to proceed?What process describes the large cloud breaking down into smaller, dense, gravitationally bound clumps or cores?What is the typical timescale for the collapse of a sufficiently dense core once fragmentation has occurred?What is the object called that forms after a core becomes gravitationally dominant but has not yet initiated stable core fusion?What must occur internally for a protostar to officially achieve the status of a main-sequence star?