Planets accreting out of a protoplanetary disk and clearing their orbit. Credit: NASA.
Wanna build celestial objects? I mean it sounds easy – you just start with a big cloud of dust and give it a nudge so that it starts to spin and accrete and you end up with a star with a few wisps of dust left in orbit that continue to accrete to form planets.
Trouble is, this process doesn’t seem to be physically possible – or at least nothing like it can be replicated in standard theoretical models and laboratory simulations. There’s a problem with the initial small scale accretion steps.
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Read the rest of Astronomy Without A Telescope – A Snowball’s Chance (644 words)
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Full story at http://www.universetoday.com/74412/astronomy-without-a-telescope-a-snowballs-chance/
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