Comments on: The black cloud

By: systemic - Lonely Planet Guide to the Hyades

systemic - Lonely Planet Guide to the Hyades — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:32:59 +0000

[...] Lonely Planet Guide to the Hyadesgreg posted in systemic faq, exoplanet detection on February 9th, 2007 [...]

By: systemic - G.I. No

systemic - G.I. No — Tue, 02 May 2006 02:32:31 +0000

[...] To be fair, there are also some thorny problems associated with core-accretion. In the next few posts of the giant planet formation series [1, 2, 3, 4 and 5] that we’ve been running, I’ll describe these in more detail. [...]

By: systemic - Oligarchic Growth

systemic - Oligarchic Growth — Mon, 01 May 2006 06:37:33 +0000

[...] [A continuation of posts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on the formation of Jovian planets.] [...]

By: systemic - Q

systemic - Q — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 21:46:27 +0000

[...] This post continues the oklo.org posts: (1) the black cloud, and (2) disks. [...]

By: systemic - HD 149026

systemic - HD 149026 — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 23:11:37 +0000

[...] The Solar System was once a gigantic black cloud in space, imbued with a tiny overall spin in some particular random direction. The net spin of our ancient protostellar cloud is still manifest in today’s solar system. The planets all orbit the Sun in a direction counterclockwise as seen from above. The major planetary satellites (with the exception of Triton) all orbit counterclockwise as well. The Sun spins on an axis that lies within 7 degrees of the average orbital plane of the planet. [...]

By: systemic - disks

systemic - disks — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 18:12:55 +0000

[...] The black cloud post describes how the formation of a star and a planetary system can be traced back to the moment when a dense core within a giant molecular cloud begins to suffer an inside-out collapse. The gas at the center of the cloud collapses first, and congregates into the beginnings of a hydrostatically supported protostar. The overlying regions thus lose their support and begin to career inward as well. A wave of collapse radiates outward from the center of the cloud, triggering a downward avalanche of gas and dust. Computer simulations show how gas that has fallen from large distances comes together to form a protostellar disk in orbit around the nascent central protostar. In the image shown below, a simulation of the earliest phases of our own solar system show a region (viewed edge-on) that is several hundred astronomical units across, and plotted 40,000 years after the collapse has started. At this stage of the simulation, roughly half of a solar mass of material has collected in the central protostar, and another half a solar mass or so is orbiting in a very massive protostellar disk. [...]