Jeans instability
Inestabilidad de Jeans
- Date
- 1902 · confidence high
- Place
- Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- James Jeans
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
A criterion determining when an interstellar gas cloud collapses under its own gravity because internal pressure can no longer support it. It explains the trigger for gravitational collapse and star formation.
What it led to
- The modern theory of star formation
- Models of fragmentation in giant molecular clouds