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An interstellar cloud is generally an accumulation of gas, plasma, and dust in our and other galaxies. But differently, an interstellar cloud is a denser-than-average region of the interstellar medium , the matter and radiation that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy.
The amount of gas a super-Earth that formed in situ acquires may depend on when the planetary embryos merged due to giant impacts relative to the dissipation of the gas disk. If the mergers happen after the gas disk dissipates terrestrial planets can form, if in a transition disk a super-Earth with a gas envelope containing a few percent of its ...
During the merger, if there is enough gas, the increased gravity will force the gas to the centre of the forming elliptical galaxy. This may lead to a short period of intensive star formation called a starburst. [137] In addition, the infalling gas will feed the newly formed black hole, transforming it into an active galactic nucleus. The force ...
Impurities in the A-cloud formed Mars and the Moon (later captured by Earth), impurities in the B-cloud collapsed to form the outer planets, the C-cloud condensed into Mercury, Venus, Earth, the asteroid belt, moons of Jupiter, and Saturn's rings, while Pluto, Triton, the outer satellites of Saturn, the moons of Uranus, the Kuiper Belt, and the ...
[f] [154] [155] Filling the space between the stars is a disk of gas and dust called the interstellar medium. This disk has at least a comparable extent in radius to the stars, [156] whereas the thickness of the gas layer ranges from hundreds of light-years for the colder gas to thousands of light-years for warmer gas. [157] [158]
Map showing the Sun located near the edge of the Local Interstellar Cloud and Alpha Centauri about 4 light-years away in the neighboring G-Cloud complex Interstellar medium and astrosphere meeting. Astronomers describe the ISM as turbulent, meaning that the gas has quasi-random motions coherent over a large range of spatial scales.
As this collapsing cloud, called a solar nebula, becomes denser, random gas motions originally present in the cloud average out in favor of the direction of the nebula's net angular momentum. Conservation of angular momentum causes the rotation to increase as the nebula radius decreases. This rotation causes the cloud to flatten out—much like ...
The Oort cloud (/ ɔːr t, ʊər t /), [1] sometimes called the Öpik–Oort cloud, [2] is theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). [3] [note 1] [4] The concept of such a cloud was proposed in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, in whose ...