| 78 | 78 | This plot shows that the entire interior of the sphere experiences a homologous (uniform) increase in density. The density increases everywhere exactly the same! Furthermore, the density increases by many orders of magnitude over the period of collapse. Assuming the collapse is isothermal (which is a good approximation over much of the collapse of protostars), then this implies that the Jeans mass decreases drastically over the period of collapse. This means that local regions of the collapsing sphere themselves will begin collapsing, and the whole cloud can be expected to fragment. |
