Related papers: Waves on the surface of the Orion molecular cloud
The recent observations of rippled structures on the surface of the Orion molecular cloud (Bern\'{e} et al. 2010), have been attributed to the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability. The wavelike structures which have mainly seen near…
Hydrodynamical instabilities are believed to power some of the small scale (0.1-10 pc) turbulence and chemical mixing in the interstellar medium. Identifying such instabilities has always been difficult but recent observations of a wavelike…
Massive stars form in clusters within self-gravitating molecular clouds. The size scale of these clusters is sufficiently large that non-thermal, or turbulent, motions of the gas must be taken into account when considering their formation.…
Recent progress in the understanding of star formation is summarized. A consistent picture is emerging where molecular clouds form with turbulent velocity fields and clumpy substructure, imprinted already during their formation. The clouds…
Star formation is enhanced in spiral arms because of a combination of orbit crowding, cloud collisions, and gravitational instabilities. The characteristic mass for the instability is 10^7 Msun in gas and 10^5 Msun in stars, and the…
Turbulent small-scale structures in the envelopes and winds of massive stars have long been suggested as the cause for excessive line broadening that could not be explained by other mechanisms such as thermal broadening. However, the origin…
It is suggested that the wavelike character of the recently discovered 2.7-kiloparsec spatially and kinematically coherent complex of interstellar clouds in the solar neighborhood--the Radcliffe Wave--may be the result of a Kelvin-Helmholtz…
Stars and star clusters form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest…
We present a comprehensive study of MHD waves and instabilities in a weakly ionised system, e.g., an interstellar molecular cloud. We determine all the critical wavelengths of perturbations across which the sustainable wave modes can change…
Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…
We suggest that the Orion A cloud is gravitationally collapsing on large scales, and is producing the Orion Nebula Cluster due to the focusing effects of gravity acting within a finite cloud geometry. In support of this suggestion, we show…
We consider the stability properties of the ocean of accreting magnetic neutron stars. It turns out that the ocean is always unstable due to the combined influence of the temperature and chemical composition gradients along the surface and…
The most recent observational evidence seems to indicate that giant molecular clouds are predominantly gravitationally unbound objects. In this paper we show that this is a natural consequence of a scenario in which cloud-cloud collisions…
(ABBREVIATED) Understanding the formation of stars in galaxies is central to much of modern astrophysics. In this review the relation between interstellar turbulence and star formation is discussed. Supersonic turbulence can provide support…
All gasdynamical models for the evolution of gaseous content of galaxies assume that cooling from the hot, virialized phase to the cold phase occured through some sort of thermal instability. Subsequent formation of colder clouds embedded…
We summarize the current status of the turbulent model of star formation in turbulent molecular clouds. In this model, clouds, clumps and cores form a hierarchy of nested density fluctuations caused by the turbulence, and either collapse or…
We review recent advances in the analytical and numerical modeling of the star formation rate in molecular clouds and discuss the available observational constraints. We focus on molecular clouds as the fundamental star formation sites,…
This paper describes some interesting properties of waves in, and oscillations of, the interstellar medium in the direction normal to the plane of the Galaxy. Our purpose is to examine possible reasons for four observed phenomena: the…
We discuss star formation in the turbulent interstellar medium. We argue that morphological appearance and dynamical evolution of the gas is primarily determined by supersonic turbulence, and that stars form via a process we call…
We study the linear evolution of small perturbations in self-gravitating fluid systems in two spatial dimensions; we consider both cylindrical and cartesian (i.e., slab) geometries. The treatment is general, but the application is to…