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Title
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Lighting the universe with filaments
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Author
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Abstract
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| The first stars in the universe form when chemically pristine gas heats as it falls into dark-matter potential wells, cools radiatively because of the formation of molecular hydrogen, and becomes self-gravitating. Using supercomputer simulations, we demonstrated that the stars' properties depend critically on the currently unknown nature of the dark matter. If the dark-matter particles have intrinsic velocities that wipe out small-scale structure, then the first stars form in filaments with lengths on the order of the free-streaming scale, which can be ∼1020 meters (∼3 kiloparsecs, corresponding to a baryonic mass of ∼107 solar masses) for realistic warm dark matter candidates. Fragmentation of the filaments forms stars with a range of masses, which may explain the observed peculiar element abundance pattern of extremely metal-poor stars, whereas coalescence of fragments and stars during the filament's ultimate collapse may seed the supermassive black holes that lurk in the centers of most massive galaxies. |
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Language
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English
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Source (journal)
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Science / American Association for the Advancement of Science [Washington, D.C.] - Washington, D.C., 1880, currens
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Publication
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Washington, D.C.
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American Association for the Advancement of Science
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2007
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ISSN
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0036-8075
[print]
1095-9203
[online]
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DOI
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10.1126/SCIENCE.1146676
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Volume/pages
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317
:5844
(2007)
, p. 1527-1530
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ISI
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000249467900035
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Full text (Publisher's DOI)
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