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Jeans mass| In astronomy, mass that a cloud (or part of a cloud) of interstellar gas must have before it can contract under its own weight to form a protostar. The Jeans mass is an expression of the Jeans criterion, which says that a cloud will contract when the gravitational force tending to draw material towards its centre is greater than the opposing force due to gas pressure. It is named after English mathematician James Hopwood Jeans, whose work focused on the kinetic theory of gases and the origins of the cosmos. |
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