Cosmopedia Protostar
cosmopedia star class stars hints
A protostar is a very young star that is still gathering mass from its parent molecular cloud. The protostellar phase is the earliest one in the process of stellar evolution. For a one solar-mass star it lasts about 1,000,000 years.
The phase begins when a molecular cloud first collapses under the force of self-gravity. It ends when the protostar blows back the infalling gas and is revealed as an optically visible pre-main-sequence star, which later contracts to become a main sequence star.
Star formation begins in relatively small molecular clouds called dense cores. Each dense core is initially in balance between self-gravity, which tends to compress the object, and both gas pressure and magnetic pressure, which tend to inflate it.
As the dense core accrues mass from its larger, surrounding cloud, self-gravity begins to overwhelm pressure, and collapse begins. The gas that collapses toward the center of the dense core first builds up a low-mass protostar, and then a protoplanetary disk orbiting the object.
As the collapse continues, an increasing amount of gas impacts the disk rather than the star, a consequence of angular momentum conservation. Exactly how material in the disk spirals inward onto the protostar is not yet understood, despite a great deal of theoretical effort.
The surface is thus very different from the relatively quiescent photosphere of a pre-main sequence or main-sequence star. Within its deep interior, the protostar has lower temperature than an ordinary star. At its center, hydrogen is not yet undergoing nuclear fusion.
The energy generated from ordinary stars comes from the nuclear fusion occurring at their centers. Protostars also generate energy, but it comes from the radiation liberated at the shocks on its surface and on the surface of its surrounding disk.
The radiation thus created must traverse the interstellar dust in the surrounding dense core. The dust absorbs all impinging photons and reradiates them at longer wavelengths. Consequently, a protostar is not detectable at optical wavelengths, and cannot be placed in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, unlike the more evolved pre-main-sequence stars.
History of the Future
There are no habitables planets possible at Protostars.
This article uses material from these Wikipedia articles which were released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0: Protostar
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