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synthesized in stars. We are therefore ready to form solar systems that are not
just based on hydrogen and helium, but include all of
the elements in the periodic table. Many generations of dying
stars have ejected freshly synthesized matter
back into interstellar space. But how can we use this widely
scattered matter to form dense solar systems with planets? If the ejected materi
al was evenly
distributed in the universe, this would be a hopeless task. Fortunately, due to
the force of gravity, the matter is concentrated in galaxies,
such as our Milky Way. And within the galaxies, most of the matter is further
concentrated into molecular clouds. The molecular clouds in
the Milky Way are enormous, even when we observe them from the Earth. But since
they are also very faint, they
remain almost invisible to the naked eye. If you have ever watched the sky
you are likely familiar with the Orion constellation which lies
close to the celestial equator. The three bright stars are also
known as Orion's belt. They are, in fact, massive stars
within the Orion constellation. If we zoom in and increase the brightness,
the underlying cloud becomes visible. Here you may be able to see the Horsehead
Nebula, and up here is your Orion Nebula, which is an active star forming region
. The newly formed stars make
this part of Orion very bright. We cannot observe how our
own solar system formed, but if we observe areas like this, we can see
how other systems form in a similar way. The size of giant molecular clouds
may conveniently be measured in units of light-years. This cloud measures severa
l
hundred light-years across. Much bigger than the human
mind can comprehend. Molecular clouds look very passive,
but in fact, they are highly dynamic. The stellar winds from massive stars and s
upernova explosions push
the gas in the cloud around, at speeds up to several hundred kilometers
per second, a truly amazing speed. But even at a hundred kilometers per
second it would take you a couple of million years to get from here to here. The
refore, the picture does not
change from one knot to the other, giving us the false impression that we
are looking at something rather inactive. However, if we could fast-forward
this picture a few million years, we would be able to see that this
is indeed a very dynamic system. We can use computer simulations
to fast forward this process. What you see here is a simulation
of a giant molecular cloud, similar in size to
the picture you just saw. The simulation runs for 2 million years, and you can s
ee that on
that time scale the cloud is very dynamic. Note how newborn stars light up withi
n
the cloud as the simulation runs. Despite the fact that the gas is
highly concentrated in these giant molecular clouds, we still need
to compress it by many orders of magnitude to form a solar system. Although grav
ity helped
us concentrating the gas, the gas pressure works against gravity and
prevents the cloud from collapsing. However, since these clouds are highly
dynamic systems, the gas sometimes becomes compressed to a point where gravity
is stronger than the gas pressure. The result is a runaway collapse,
resulting in star formation. A famous example of star formation is
seen in this Hubble space image of the Eagle Nebula. The intense stellar winds f
rom
a couple of massive stars have created a bubble in the cloud. The stellar winds
not only
push the gas further and further away from the star, through
a process known as photoevaporation, it also compresses the gas to the point