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The formation of substellar objects induced by the collision of protostellar disks
1D. N. C. Lin and P. Bodenheimer, University of California/Lick Observatory, Board of Studies in Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. G. Laughlin, Department of Astronomy, University of Califor.
Science (New York, N.Y.)
|September 25, 1998
Abstract:
Simulations of a close encounter between two protostars, each surrounded by a relatively massive disk, resulted in the ejection of some of the disk material into a tidal tail. A portion of the tail condensed into an object with a mass in the range of 5 to 10 jovian masses. This mechanism may explain the existence of the single objects of substellar mass that have recently been discovered.