1 research outputs found
Russell Lecture: Dark Star Formation and Cooling Instability
Optically thin cooling gas at most temperatures above 30K will make
condensations by pressure pushing material into cool dense regions. This works
without gravity. Cooling condensations will flatten and become
planar/similarity solutions. Most star formation may start from cooling
condensations - with gravity only important in the later stages. The idea that
some of the dark matter could be pristine white dwarfs that condensed slowly on
to planetary sized seeds without firing nuclear reactions is found lacking.
However, recent observations indicate fifty times more halo white dwarfs than
have been previously acknowledged; enough to make the halo fraction observed as
MACHOS.
A cosmological census shows that only 1% of the mass of the Universe is of
known constitution.Comment: 32 Pages, Latex (uses aastex & natbib), 5 eps figures, submitted to
ApJ April 200