Andros Lucio @androslucio - Tumblr Blog

ninjatune

Throwback to some psychedelic times in Mexico City with Bonobo.

Photo: Andrea Noel

More at: https://instagram.com/si_bonobo

spaceplasma

The formation and evolution of pre-stellar discs

This series of radiation hydrodynamical calculations follows the collapse of one solar-mass molecular cloud cores all the way to the formation of the stellar core. This project was a follow-up to my 1998 barotropic calculations which discovered that rapidly-rotating first hydrostatic cores could develop rotational instabilities and evolve into large discs before the stellar core formed within them.

In this calculation the initial molecular cloud core is rotating slowly quickly enough that the first hydrostatic core becomes dynamically rotationally unstable. However, in this case, the instability is stronger. The pre-stellar disc that is formed has a radius approaching 100 AU, and the end of one of the spiral arms manages to collect enough gas to form a self-gravitating fragment. All of this evolution occurs before the stellar core forms (which occurs at the end of the animation). This calculation was performed using 1 million SPH particles.

Credit: Simulation & visualisation by Matthew Bate, University of Exeter