Massive globular clusters are some of the oldest objects in the Universe, held together by the collective gravity of their stars. Open star clusters, on the other hand, don't live so long. ...
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Open Star Clusters Die Young
Massive globular clusters are some of the oldest objects in the Universe, held together by the collective gravity of their stars. Open star clusters, on the other hand, don't live so long. ...
Read the full blog entry
Newbie
So Fraser,
What's with all the typos? Do you type these as quickly as you possibly can to stay within some deadline?
"they have a very short lifespans"
"they die as supernovae within a few million years ago"
"intigration"
I still appreciate the time and effort taken, don't get me wrong, I've been a fan for a long time...you just need to find someone as critical as me to give the articles the ol' once over.
Oh, and Hi everyone. Never posted before and this is what you get.
Backyard Boy
Established Member
Couldn't a small nebula give birth to just one massive star, that then blows away the remainder? Then you'd be left with a solo massive star.
Established Member
All stars (including very massive ones) appear to be born in clusters and associations, through a process of fragmentation of a massive cloud of gas and dust to form numerous stars. How these clouds fragment is not completely understood, however it seems unlikely that the star formation process would give birth to only one massive star and no others. It just doesn't seem to be how stars are formed.Originally Posted by suitti
Whatever starts the process of cloud fragmentation and star birth (usually compression of gas clouds by a nearby supernova or collision and compression of gas clouds in spiral arms) appears to give rise to numerous stars.
The fact that a number of massive solo stars have been observed would appear to indicate that the original star clusters and associations have been severely disrupted by gravitational interactions such as to tear them apart and send the individual stars off on their own tangents. At least this is the most likely explanation.
Order of Kilopi
Fraser. Thank you, ties in nicely with the Crux Centaurus OB Association. Gifts we get from little wanderers in our history. I'm interested in the ejecta from these babies going supernova. Pete.
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