2009/07/16 by Matthew J. Turk, Tom Abel, Brian W. O'Shea · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.1173540
published as Science 9 July 2009: 1173540v1 · Accepted by Science, first published online on July 9, 2009 in Science Express. 16 pages, 4 figures, includes supporting online material
arxiv created 2009/07/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Previous high resolution cosmological simulations predict the first stars to appear in the early universe to be very massive and to form in isolation. Here we discuss a cosmological simulation in which the central 50 solar mass clump breaks up into two cores, having a mass ratio of two to one, with one fragment collapsing to densities of 10-8 g/cc. The second fragment, at a distance of 800 astronomical units, is also optically thick to its own cooling radiation from molecular hydrogen lines, but is still able to cool via collision-induced emission. The two dense peaks will continue to accrete from the surrounding cold gas reservoir over a period of 105 years and will likely form a binary star system.