Abstract
CHANDRASEKHAR has derived in a very elegant manner1, from his theory of density fluctuations in an isotropic homogeneous turbulence field2, the generalization to a turbulent medium of Jeans's criterion for the stability against inhomogeneity of an infinite quiescent homogeneous medium. The expression which he obtains may be written: where λ is the critical length for stability, c is the speed of sound in the medium, θ the temperature, m the mass of a gas molecule, and ū2 the mean square velocity of the turbulence field.
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References
Chandrasekhar, S., Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 210, 18 (1951).
Chandrasekhar, S., Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 210, 26 (1951).
Spitzer, jun., L., and Savedoff, M., Astrophys. J., 111, 593 (1950).
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PARKER, E. Gravitational Instability of a Turbulent Medium. Nature 170, 1030 (1952). https://doi.org/10.1038/1701030a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1701030a0
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