Stars are born in cold molecular clouds, out of gas gathered together by gravity. This page allows you to experiment with a numerical simulation of this process. It evolves a two-dimensional numerical model of a cold, self-gravitating, magnetized cloud in real time.
Just set the parameters for the calculation below and submit.
After a short delay you'll receive a color animation of the density field.
Set the ratio of the Alfven speed to sound speed (strength of magnetic field):
Set the sonic Mach number of initial fluctations:
Set (integer) seed for random number generator:
The dumping frequency determines the number of frames in the final movie file by the ratio 0.45/dump. Set the dumping frequency:
Numerical resolution (the larger it is, the longer you wait): 16x16 32x32 64x64 128x128 256x256
Now submit! or
