Abstract
IT is now generally accepted that interstellar grains can grow by some form of accretion from the surrounding interstellar gas (and other grains) given suitable conditions, and this growth has been used in several astrophysical theories1. A number of authors, for example, McCrea and McNally2, and Hoyle and Wickramasinghe3, have devised methods by which such growth of grains can occur, although none has been universally accepted. In this communication we shall assume that a fixed proportion of the colliding particles adhere to the grain and, using a simple kinetic theory model, calculate the rate of growth of a grain moving at any speed through the cloud.
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References
Ringwood, A. E., Geochemica et Cosmochimica Acta, 20, 241 (1960).
McCrea, W. H., and McNally, D., Mon. Not. Roy. Astro. Soc., 121, 238 (1960).
Hoyle, F., and Wickramasinghe, N. C., Mon. Not. Roy. Astro. Soc., 124, 417 (1962).
Magnus, W., and Oberhettinger, F., Functions of Mathematical Physics (Chelsea, New York, 1954).
Williams, I. P., Ph.D. thesis, London (1963).
Lindblad, B., Nature, 135, 133 (1935).
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BAINES, M., WILLIAMS, I. Growth of Interstellar Grains. Nature 205, 59–60 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/205059a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/205059a0
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