Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Pillars of Creation



More from the AAS meeting: Infrared observations suggest that the famous Eagle Nebula may be blown away by a nearby supernova. Not to worry, if so it will be visible in all its beauty for 1000 years. Here we see the process of star formation. The immense pillars are cocoons containing infant stars. Somehow the highly diffuse interstellar gas is collapsing into a point so hot and dense that nuclear fusion is ignited. During this process, something prevents that heat from dissipating the cloud and ending the birth.

One way to produce this formation would be if a tiny Black Hole, or many, collided with the cloud. Small singularities would naturally gather material around them, but would not be big enough to suck up the whole cloud. At their centres, gravity and Hawking radiation would produce the conditions for stars to ignite. The heat produced would balance gravity’s inward pull so that the stars burned steadily. The Black Holes may still be in the stars’ cores, quietly contributing to their power output.

3 Comments:

Blogger QUASAR9 said...

Hi Louise, nice post.

4:17 AM  
Blogger QUASAR9 said...

Also liked this from the previous post The Volcano:
"Presence of a singularity also explains Earth's magnetic field, and why that field is independent of the geographic poles. The singularity also explains how Earth and other bodies coalesced from a promordial cloud of gas. Particles of the infant solar system were far too tiny to assemble themselves into protoplanets."
"Earth formed around a tiny singularity as a pearl forms around a grain of sand."


And your comparison of The Pillars of creation to cocoons with stars in the interior. The stars would produce the gravity, no? - but why or what is forming the stars, and causing the stars to be born in the interior of the pillars

4:24 AM  
Blogger L. Riofrio said...

HI Q, a few tiny Black Holes colliding with the gas cloud would get things going.

11:53 AM  

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