Making Starbirth Easier Outcome: A new model of star formation
which uses the advances in understanding of magnetic
reconnection has been tested with numerical simulations.
Transformative: The traditional paradigm of star formation based
on ambipolar diffusion process faces severe problems explaining
observational data. New model can explain new observations and
opens ways to better modeling star formation. Scientific
problem: All stars including our Sun were born from clouds of
gas as gravitational forces collected the matter from the scales
of light years into relatively small dense hot luminous objects.
Gas from which stars are born exhibits chaotic turbulent motion
and it carries magnetic fields that counteract the gravitational
collapse. For years the problem of removing of magnetic field
from star forming regions has the focus of intense studies by
astrophysicists. Magnetic fields couple with the gas in
molecular clouds through their interactions with the minute
fraction of ions present in the gas and,