Astrophysics (Index)About

cloud fragmentation

(clumping in clouds due to gravitational instability)

Cloud fragmentation is the clumping of a cloud (e.g., molecular cloud) due to gravitational instability, i.e., regions of the cloud where the forces are balanced such that a volume of high density increases its own density, decreasing the density of the volume around it, essentially breaking it into pieces. Such a process is assumed in current theories of star formation and in some models of planet formation (gravitational instability models).


(planet formation,star formation,clouds)
Further reading:
http://www.astro.uwo.ca/~basu/talks/basu_ewass2017.pdf
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016IAUS..315...85B/abstract
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1998ApJ...501L.205K/abstract

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