molecular cloud

molecular cloud, interstellar clump or cloud that is opaque because of its internal dust grains. The form of such dark clouds is very irregular: they have no clearly defined outer boundaries and sometimes take on convoluted serpentine shapes because of turbulence. The largest molecular clouds are visible to the naked eye, appearing as dark patches against the brighter background of the Milky Way Galaxy. An example is the Coalsack in the southern sky. Stars are born within molecular clouds.

Composition

The hydrogen of these opaque dark clouds exists in the form of H₂ molecules. The largest nebulae of this type, the so-called giant molecular clouds, are a million times more massive than the Sun. They contain much of the mass of the interstellar medium, are some 150 light-years across, and have an average density of 100 to 300 molecules per cubic centimetre and an internal temperature of only 7 to 15 K. Molecular clouds consist mainly of gas and dust but contain many stars as well. The central regions of these clouds are completely hidden from view by dust and would be undetectable except for the far-infrared thermal emission from dust grains and the microwave emissions from the constituent molecules. This radiation is not absorbed by dust and readily escapes the cloud. The material within the clouds is clumped together on all size scales, with some clouds ranging down to the masses of individual stars. The density within the clumps may reach up to 10⁵ H₂ molecules per cubic centimetre or more. Small clumps may extend about one light-year across. Turbulence and the internal magnetic field provide support against the clouds’ own gravity.

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The chemistry and physical conditions of the interior of a molecular cloud are quite different from those of the surrounding low-density interstellar medium. In the outer parts of the dark cloud, hydrogen is neutral. Deeper within it, as dust blocks out an increasing amount of stellar ultraviolet radiation, the cloud becomes darker and colder. Approaching the centre, the predominant form of gaseous carbon changes successively from C⁺ on the outside to neutral C (C⁰) and finally to the molecule carbon monoxide (CO), which is so stable that it remains the major form of carbon in the gas phase in the darkest regions. At great depths within the cloud, other molecules can be seen from their microwave transitions, and more than 150 chemical species have been identified within the constituent gas. Because of the comparatively low densities and temperatures, the chemistry is very exotic, as judged by terrestrial experiments; some rather unstable species can exist in space because there is not enough energy to convert them to more-stable forms. An example is the near equality of the abundances of the interstellar molecule HNC (hydroisocyanic acid) and its isomer HCN (hydrocyanic acid); in ordinary terrestrial conditions there is plenty of energy to allow the nitrogen and carbon atoms in HNC to exchange positions and produce HCN, by far the preferred species for equilibrium chemistry. In the cold clouds, however, not enough energy exists for the exchange to occur. There is less than one-thousandth as much starlight within a cloud as in the interstellar space outside the cloud, and the heating of the material in the cloud is provided primarily by cosmic rays. Cooling within the cloud occurs chiefly by transitions between low-lying levels of the carbon monoxide molecule.

The emission lines from C⁺, C⁰, and CO show that the edges of the molecular clouds are very convoluted spatially, with stellar ultraviolet radiation able to penetrate surprisingly far throughout the cloud despite the absorption of dust. Stellar radiation can apparently enter the cloud through channels where the dust (and gas) density is lower than average. The clumpiness of the interstellar material has profound effects on its properties.

Formation of stars

In the inner regions of molecular clouds an important event takes place: the formation of stars from the gravitational collapse of dense clumps within the nebula. Initially the cloud consists of a chaotic jumble of smaller clouds, each of which is destined to be an individual stellar system. Each system has a rotary motion arising from the original motions of the material that is falling into it. Because of this spin, the collapsing cloud flattens as it shrinks. Eventually most of its mass is in a rotating condensation near its centre, a “protostar” destined to become one or more closely spaced stars. Surrounding the protostar is a rotating disk larger than the solar system that collapses into “protoplanets” and comets.

These ideas are given encouraging confirmation by observations of molecular clouds in very long wavelength infrared radiation. Some of the brightest infrared sources are associated with such dark dust clouds; a good example is the class of T Tauri variables, named for their prototype star in the constellation Taurus. The T Tauri stars are known for a variety of reasons to be extremely young. The variables are always found in or near molecular clouds; they often are also powerful sources of infrared radiation, corresponding to warm clouds of dust heated by the T Tauri star to a few hundred kelvins. There are some strong infrared sources (especially in the constellation of Orion) that have no visible stars with them; these are presumably “cocoon stars” completely hidden by their veils of dust.

One of the remarkable features of molecular clouds is their concentration in the spiral arms in the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy. While there is no definite boundary to the arms, which have irregularities and bifurcations, the nebulae in other spiral galaxies are strung out along these narrow lanes and form a beautifully symmetric system when viewed from another galaxy. The nebulae are remarkably close to the galactic plane; most are within 300 light-years, only 1 percent of the Sun’s distance from the centre. The details of the explanation of why the gas is largely confined to the spiral arms is beyond the scope of this article (see Milky Way Galaxy: Major components). Briefly, the higher density of the stars in the arms produces sufficient gravity to hold the gas to them.

Why doesn’t the gas simply condense into stars and disappear? The present rate of star formation is about one solar mass per year in the entire Galaxy, which contains something like 2 × 10⁹ solar masses of gas. Clearly, if the gas received no return of material from stars, it would be depleted in roughly 2 × 10⁹ years, about one-sixth the present age of the Galaxy. There are several processes by which gas is returned to the interstellar medium. Possibly the most important is the ejection of planetary nebula shells; other processes are ejection of material from massive O- and B-type normal stars or from cool M giants and supergiants. The rate of gas ejection is roughly equal to the rate of star formation, so that the mass of free gas is declining very slowly. (Some gas is also falling into the Galaxy that has never been associated with any galaxy.)

This cycling of gas through stars has had one major effect: the chemical composition of the gas has been changed by the nuclear reactions inside the stars. There is excellent evidence that the Galaxy originally consisted of 77 percent hydrogen by mass and that almost all of the rest of the constituent matter was helium. All heavy elements have been produced inside stars by being subjected to the exceedingly high temperatures and densities in the central regions. Thus, most of the atoms and molecules on Earth, as well as in human bodies, owe their very existence to processes that occur within stars.