First Look at Gravitational Dance that Drives Star Formation

Credit: G. Williams et al. / University of Cardiff.

Williams, of Cardiff University, explains: “We’ve known for some time that dusty, filamentary cloud structures are ubiquitous in the Milky Way’s interstellar medium. We also know that the densest of these filaments fragment into compact pockets of cold gas that then collapse under their own gravity to form individual stars. However, there’s still been a question mark over how, exactly, this happens.”

Map of the average internal motions of the dense gas (termed velocity width) for all cores that showed a peak in the velocity width. The overlaid contours represent the average density of the dense gas. 

Credit: G. Williams et al. / University of Cardiff

Williams notes: “We believe that the same processes are at work at the filament junction, where both the largest internal motions of the gas and the most massive cores are found. We also speculate that strong acceleration gradients are generated at the hub centre resulting in large accumulation of matter and the formation of massive cores. Hence, our results reveal that this type of interstellar filament and hub system represents a privileged location for the formation of the most massive of stars in the Galaxy.”