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Sunday, 5 November 2023 8:32 am

FORMATION OF STARS AND PLANETS

• Article "First Stars in the Universe", Richard Larson and Volker Bromm (2009 said,
○ Universe - featureless and dark(Cosmic Dark ages)
○ First stars appeared after 100 million years after a big bang
○ Galaxies across the cosmos after nearly a billion years.
○ Using sophisticated computer simulation techniques made models to show density
fluctuations left over from big bang.
▪ New models - first stars were quite massive and luminous and an epochal event
fundamentally changed the universe and its subsequent evolution. They altered
the dynamics by heating and ionizing surrounding gases.
▪ Earliest stars also produced and dispersed the first heavy elements that
eventually formed solar systems like our own.
▪ Collapse of stars have seeded the growth of supermassive black holes that
became the power sources of quasars
▪ Earliest stars make up of what the universe we see today
THE FIRST STARS IN THE UNIVERSE
• Observation of distant quasars have allowed scientists to probe back in time and catch a
glimpse of the final days of the “cosmic dark ages.”
The Dark Ages
• Astronomers were able to study the univ history by training their telescopes on distant
galaxies and quasars that emitted their light billions of years ago.
• Age is determined by the redshift that shows how much the universe has expanded since the
light was produced.
• Oldest galaxies and quasars - date a billion years after big bang assuming that the present age
is 12-14 billion years.
• Cosmologists make deductions about the early universe based on the cosmic microwave
background that was emitted 400,000 years after big bang.
• This uniformity indicates that matter was distributed very smoothly bc there were no large
luminous objects to disturb the primordial soup, it must have remained smooth and
featureless for million years afterward.
• Galaxy clusters - there were clumps that gradually evolved into gravitationally bound
structures. Here smaller systems formed first then merged into larger agglomerations. Denser
regions would take form of a network of filaments, and the first star-forming systems - small
protogalaxies - would coalesce at the nodes of this network. Similarly, protogalaxies would
merge and form galaxies and congregate. This process is still ongoing.
• According to Cosmological models, first small systems capable of forming stars appeared
between 100 million and 250 million years after the big bang. They would have been 100,000
to one million times more massive than the sun and measured 30 to 100 light-years across
• Milky way - where there is a formation of molecular gas clouds with similar properties,
however its first protogalaxies would have differed in fundamental ways:
○ Mostly consist of dark matter (scattered in the outer halo) - putative elementary
particles that make up about 90 percent of the universe's mass. In present day, it is
segregated from ordinary matter (inner region). But in protogalaxies, they would have
been mixed with ordinary matter.
○ Contained no significant amount of any elements besides hydrogen and helium.
▪ Big bang produced hydrogen and helium
▪ Most heavier elements (metals) were created through thermonuclear fusion
reaction in stars which would not have been present before the first stars had
formed.
▪ Young metal-rich stars - Population I stars
▪ Old metal-poor stars - Population II stars
▪ Stars with no metal at all - Population III stars
• Stars that arise from molecular gas clouds are born in complex environments have been
altered by the effects of previous star formation.

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 altered by the effects of previous star formation.
• Let there be Light - primordial gas clouds would typically form at the nodes of a small-scale
filamentary network and then begin to contract (decrease) because of gravity. This
compression would heat the gas causing hydrogen atoms to pair up in the densest parts
creating molecular hydrogen. They would then cool the these parts by emitting infrared
radiation and collide with hydrogen atoms causing a drop in temperature, reducing gas
pressure and allow them to contract into gravitationally bound clumps. Cooling allows
ordinary matter in the primordial system to separate from dark matter
• Jeans mass - minimum mass that a clump of gas must have to collapse under its gravity -
proportional to the square of the gas temperature and inversely proportional to the square
root of the gas pressure.

The Cosmic Renaissance

• Property of stars with no metals
○ higher surface temperatures than stars with compositions like that of the sun.
○ Production of nuclear energy is at the center (less efficient without metals and it should
be hotter and more compact to counteract gravity
○ Due to its compact structure, surface layers would be hotter.
• The first starlight in the universe would have been mainly ultraviolet radiation from very hot
stars, and it would have begun to heat and ionize the neutral hydrogen and helium gas around
these stars soon after they formed. We call this event the cosmic renaissance.
• Evidence for the final stages of the ionization process - there is strong absorption of ultraviolet
high in the spectra of quasars that date from about 900 million years after the big bang. (last
patches of neutral hydrogen gas were being ionized at the time.
○ Helium requires more energy to ionize than hydrogen. If star is massive then hydrogen
and helium were ionized at the same time. If not so massive, helium must have been
ionized later from energetic radiation from quasars.
• Cooling of the stars considerably boost the overall rate which stars are born so it is possible
that pace of star formation did not accelerate until the first metals had been produced. In this
case, the second-generation stars might have been the ones primarily responsible for lighting
up the universe and bringing about the cosmic renaissance

• Energy source for quasars is the gas whirling into the black holes at the centers of large
galaxies
• Next Generation Space Telescope - successor of Hubble Space telescope

• First protogalaxies (hydrogen and helium) consisted mostly of dark matter

○ does not interact with EM force
○ does not absorb, reflect, or emit light, making it extremely hard to detect.
○ Outweigh visible matter roughly six to one, making up about 27% of the universe
• The matter we know and that makes up all stars and galaxies only accounts for 5% of the
content of the universe
• Heavier elements were created by thermonuclear fusion reaction in stars.

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 • Heavier elements were created by thermonuclear fusion reaction in stars.

GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY

• Anything with mass will warp spacetime
• Clouds of hydrogen and helium slowly begin to accumulate
• All gases exert outward pressure and matter generates an inward gravitational force
• Very large cloud of gas (nebula) > 1 light year
• Nebula will be in hydrostatic equilibrium if the kinetic energy of the gas pressure (outwards)
and the gravitational potential energy (inwards) are equal
• If clous is massive enough above the Jeans mass - gravity wins the fight will make the cloud
collapse.
• The cloud gets flattened into a disk by the centrifugal force into a disk as the gravity continues
to pull the gas inwards the gas cloud will get hotter and denser for a million of years until the
atoms are re-ionized back into plasma.
• Inner region gets hotter and hotter until the outward pressure prevents further collapse form
gravity. The outward pressure allows for a temporary hydrostatic equilibrium. (Protostar)
• Gas continues to collect and add mass to the protostar increasing the gravitational potential
energy that collapses then continues and the pressure increases.
• This then rises the temperatures inside to a million degrees until it is enough for nuclear fusion
and with that a star is born
• Star - gigantic gas cloud that collapses due to gravity and heats up tremendously until it is
heated up to a spherical face of plasma. The heat triggers the fusion and the resulting outward
pressure counteracts gravity
• When the star is born the radiation reionizes surrounding nebulae that could also push other
gas clouds to collide with others and promoting more star formation
• Phase 1: atoms scattered and form throughout the universe
• Phase 2: atoms collect by gravity and form stars (huge stars burning in hydrogen fuel)
• Phase 3: stars collect gravity and form galaxies (stars exert a massive amount of gravity so
stars collect in dense regions)
○ Dwarf galaxy - hundred million to a couple millions of stars
○ Typical galaxy - few hundred billion stars
• Group - cluster - supercluster (increasingly larger collections of galaxies)

THE FATE OF THE FIRST STARS

• Raw materials of big bang, Hydrogen and helium - composition of sun and all stars
• Stars exploded in a supernovae
• Metals - any element heavier than helium
• Metallicity - relative quantity of metals vs hydrogen and helium
• Stars that formed more recently tend to have higher densities
• Types of star
○ Population 1 - sun 2-3% of its mass is metals
○ Population 2 - metal-poor ~.1 mass is metals - stars in the milky way, galactic bulge,
globular cluster
○ Population 3 - no heavy elements - first ever stars that were born by hydrogen and
helium
• Longest living stars - red dwarf - no dwarf has ever burned out, life span is shorter the bigger
the mass.
• Population 3 is so gigantic that is why they are not seen anymore
• Massive stars live fast, die young
• Stars form when vast clouds made up of molecular hydrogen collapse because of gravity. To
collapse into stars, they need to cool.

FORMATION OF PROTOGALAXIES

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STAR FORMATION TODAY
- Stars are made of hydrogen and helium
- Trapezium (big shining light) - protostar (core of collapsing molecular cloud. IR from
contraction, Temp/ pressure not (yet) high enough fusion)

Formation Cycle
1. Cloud is a moving molecule of gas has pressure that resists gravity
2. Dense clump forms, gravity > pressure
3. Core of clump (protostar gains mass, gravity accelerates collapse
4. Rotation rate increases, creating a circumstellar disk
a. Inner disk feeds protostar (accretion disk)
b. Remaining disk flattens into protoplanetary disk
5. Planetary system forms
a. Star "turns on" H burning I core)
b. Winds blow away disk
c. Planets sweep out orbits

• Angular momentum - momentum of a rotating object. It is conserved so it is constant. If r

changes, v must change to maintain L.
L = mvr
○ Mass of rotating body - m
○ Rotating velocity, v
○ Distance of mass from rotation axis, r
• Triggered star formation
○ Clouds colliding
○ Supernovae
○ Young, massive stars
▪ UV & fast stellar winds blow material into "walls"
• T Tauri Stars - "late-term protostars. Aren't fusing H in their cores yet, but will relatively soon.
Properties(?) - circumstellar disks, fast stellar winds
• Disk confines T Tauri winds to poles. Occasionally, winds will concentrate into jets
• Protostellar Jets - disk material ejected along rotational axis. "Dumps" angular momentum
from spinning protostar
• Herbig-Haro object - high velocity jets slamming into, ionizing interstellar gas, hundreds of
km/s, short duration (1000's of years)

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 km/s, short duration (1000's of years)

Two categories of star formation

• Microphysics - deals with how individual stars (or binaries) form.
○ Do stars of all masses acquire most of their mass via gravitational collapse of a
single dense core?
○ How are the properties of a star or binary determined by the properties of the
medium from which it forms?
○ How does the gas that goes into a protostar lose its magnetic flux and angular
momentum?
○ How do massive stars form in the face of intense radiation pressure?
○ What are the properties of the protostellar disks, jets, and outflows associated
with young stellar objects (YSOs), and what governs their dynamical evolution?
• Macrophysics - deals with formation of systems of stars, ranging from clusters to galaxies.
○ How are giant molecular clouds (GMCs), the loci of most star formation,
themselves formed out of diffuse interstellar gas?
○ What processes determine the distribution of physical conditions within star-
forming regions, and why does star formation occur in only a small fraction of the
available gas?
○ How is the rate at which stars form determined by the properties of the natal
GMC or, on a larger scale, of the interstellar medium (ISM) in a galaxy?
○ What determines the mass distribution of forming stars, the initial mass function
(IMF)?
○ Most stars form in clusters (Lada and Lada, 2003); how do stars form in such a
dense environment and in the presence of enormous radiative and mechanical
feedback from other YSOs?

Key dynamical processes involved in star formation

• Turbulence - violent commotion, agitation or disturbance "turbulent fluid" - in which the
velocity at any point fluctuates irregularly. Plays a dual role - creating overdensities to initiate
gravitational contraction or collapse & countering the effects of gravity in these overdense
regions.
• Magnetic fields
• Self-gravity

• Stars begin as protostars (hot cores that collect(?) dust and gas.
• As they become hotter, hydrogen nuclei inside the core fuse and become helium this
interaction - thermonuclear fusion - generates heat and energy that causes it to shine
• Classified into characteristics
Surface temperature - spectral classes

Light they emit - luminosity classes

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 White dwarf - Sirius B
Hypergiants - Betelgeuse
• All stars die out
○ Less massive star -sun - release stellar material such as a white dwarf surrounded by a
planetary nebula
○ More massive stars - release matters into space and burn bright supernova leaving
behind a dense body (neutron star)
○ Most massive stars - 3 times bigger than our sun collapse into themselves and create a
bottomless well of gravity, a blackhole.

FORMATION OF PLANETS
• Super earths - planets intermediate in size between terrestrial and giant planets.
• Some exoplanet systems even have giant planets close to the star, reversing the order we see
in our system.
Looking for patterns
• A way to question origin is to look for irregularities among planets. All planets lie in nearly the
same plane and revolve in the same direction around the sun. The sun also spins in the same
direction about its own axis. This pattern forms:
○ Solar nebula - spinning cloud of gas and dust.
• Composition. Spectroscopic analysis determines elements present in the sun and planets.
○ Sun, Jupiter and Saturn has hydrogen-dominated composition
○ Moon and terrestrial planets are deficient in light ices and various ices that form the
common elements oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen,
○ Earth - rarer heavy materials - iron and silicon
This process suggests the processes that led to plat formation in the inner solar system must
somehow have excluded much of lighter materials that are common elsewhere. These lighter
materials must have escapes, leaving residue of heavy stuff.

Inner planets are made of rock and metal, able to survive heat and contain little ice or gas.
Outer planets are cooler planets and moons, icy dwarf planets and comets mostly made of ice
and gas.

Evidence from far away

• Another way to understand origin is to look outward where other system of planets are
forming elsewhere. There are stars much younger than the sun so we can say that processes
of planet formation might still be accessible. Solar nebulas, circumstellar disks

Building Planets
• Circumstellar disks are common around young stars, suggesting that disks and stars form
together
• Planetesimals - models that show that material begins to coalesce by forming smaller objects,
precursors of planes.
• Solar nebula model - explain regularities in the solar system

Planetary Standard Model - conventional planetary formation theory - 4.6 billion years ago

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Planetary Standard Model - conventional planetary formation theory - 4.6 billion years ago
• Contraction - planets form along with stars where a cloud of hydrogen and helium contract
because of its gravity
• Ignition - cloud swirls into a flat, spinning disk with a dense blob in the center, Temperatures
and pressure in the core triggers thermonuclear fusion and the blob shines as a star
• Clumping - heavy metals condense into clumps. Thos in hotter, inner parts contain materials
such as iron and rock. Thos outside, include frozen "ices" such as water, methane, and
ammonia.
Beyond the Standard Model
• Interaction - if 2 growing planets have a close encounter, gravity might sling them off to
different direction and may turn them into eccentric giant exoplanet
• Migration - gas giant might lose orbital energy and spiral inwards because of friction with gas
in the disk. If it stops migrating, it will become a 'hot Jupiter' orbiting very close to the star.
• Growth - Solid clumps collide and grow fastest in the outer disk because of the ice. It becomes
big that it can pull gas from the disk
• Final formation - wind from a newborn star sweeps away the remaining gas. Solid clumps
coalesce into full-sized planets: rock-iron close to the star and gas giants farther out.

Core accretion theory - explains why orbits are almost perfectly circular and lie in or near the plane
of star's equator, why inner planets (mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) are small and made of rock
and iron and why outside planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) are enormous, gaseous
made of H and HE. Also predicted that any system of exoplanets look the same.
Things right:
• Planets are leftovers from birth of stars

Planet Formation - old model

- Tiny grains of dust collide and become big. Needs a huge object to pull

Planet formation - new model

- Tiny grains collide until it becomes so big and clump together

Nebular Hypothesis
- Most widely accepted explanation in the formation of sun and planets
- Before everything existed there was a cold spinning cloud of dust - solar nebula (caused by
uneven distribution of gases throughout the universe)
- The pull condensed the gas together towards the center making it spin more
- The spin caused it to flat and created an accretion disk
- Matter continued to collect and this warmed up
- When mass increased, gravity increased, heat increased until a ball of hot gas formed creating
a protostar also known as a sun
- When the pressure generated enough heat, it fused atoms forming a star
- Outside the star, matter was collecting, clouds and dust and rock that created protoplanets
and continued to grow
- Since they were made form the same matter, they traveled around the sun in the same
direction and plane.
- It also explains the arrangement of planets, cooler planets were pushed far away while rocky
and terrestrial were closer.
It explains:
- Why planets and star they orbit usually spin in the same direction and lie in the same plane
- The arrangement of the planets - rocky planets nearest to the sun, as giants farther away

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Our solar system has three basic types of planets:
• The terrestrial planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars – are closer to the Sun
and they consist of a core composed mostly of iron, a mantle composed of rock
(mostly silicates), and an atmosphere whose mass is a negligible fraction of the
total mass of the planet.
• The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn are 300 and 100 times more massive than
the Earth, respectively, and are mostly composed of a mixture of hydrogen
and helium in the same proportion as is found in the Sun.
• The ice giants Uranus and Neptune are at the outer edge of the solar system,
are roughly 15 times more massive than the Earth and are composed of roughly
equal parts each of rock, ice, and a hydrogen-helium mix.
The exoplanets seen so far fall into three categories:
• Hot Jupiters (about 1%): Jupiter-like planets orbiting very close to their stars
with periods of only a few days.
• Giant planets with eccentric orbits (about 10%).
• Super-Earths (about 40%), which are generally found in compact systems of
two to four planets each, orbiting their stars at distances from 0.006 to 1
astronomical unit (1 au is the distance between the Sun and the Earth) in
periods ranging from more than 100 days down to hours. Although there are no
super-Earths in our Solar System, they orbit at least 40% of all nearby Sun-like
stars, which makes them the most common type of planet found.

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