What physical consequence arises from a contracting cloud obeying the conservation of angular momentum?
Answer
Rotation speed must increase as radius shrinks, creating centrifugal force.
All large cosmic structures, including molecular clouds, possess inherent angular momentum. As gravity pulls the material inward and the cloud radius decreases, the principle of angular momentum conservation dictates that the rotation speed must accelerate. This acceleration generates an outward-directed centrifugal force. This centrifugal force acts specifically to oppose the inward pull of gravity, particularly along the cloud's equator. This opposition serves as a crucial brake on spherical collapse, often channeling the remaining collapse along the rotation axis and fundamentally altering the geometry of the resulting structure away from a single point source.
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