可以一个明星形式以外的一个星系?

2012年1月08

Question

Is it possible that in intergalactic space a star can form from a cloud of gas that's just outside a galaxy or can a star actually be ejected from a galaxy and establish itself in intergalactic space?

Answer

Dominic Ford provided this answer...

Dominic - Stars form from clouds of gas that we call molecular clouds and they form when the gravitational self-attraction of that cloud is stronger than the gas pressure which is pushing that cloud outwards. You can get a sort of chronic failure of gravity where the whole cloud collapses down to tiny points and begins fusion and becomes a star. It's actually quite difficult to trigger that initial condition where the cloud is dense enough to collapse down. You generally need something to give it some kind of compression to get the process started. One of the most likely candidates would be another star nearby going supernova, or if you're in a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way and you travel through one of the spiral arms, that's a density sound wave and if you travel through that sound wave, you're compressed and that causes a star to form.

In intergalactic space there aren't really any processes that could cause molecular clouds to collapse down like that and so I'm not aware of any theories that would allow stars to form in intergalactic space. But it's certainly the case that stars can be ripped out of galaxies and then become free-floating in intergalactic space. If, for example, two galaxies come very close to one another then the outskirts of those two galaxies can be thrown off at high velocity into intergalactic space. They form what we call strings with long strings of stars stretching out of galaxies into intergalactic space.

Comments

This is a question that I have recently been wondering as well. I think that the best way to determine whether or not intergalactic star formation is possible would be to look for structures called Strömgren Spheres surrounding intergalactic stars in the Virgo Cluster. As is conventional astronomy knowledge, stars form from collapsing clouds of dust/gas. Going off of another piece of conventional astronomy knowledge, the largest stars also have the shortest lives. Therefore stars of a certain size must have formed relatively recently, meaning that the cloud of gas/dust that collapsed to form them should still be detectable around said star. A Strömgren Sphere is a symmetrical sphere of gas/dust surround a large (OB Spectral type) star that is left over from its formation. I believe that I you could find such a structure surrounding an intergalactic star, it would be proof that stars can indeed form in intergalactic space. I do not know if anyone has researched this though...

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