Abstract
The universe is lit up with stars, which are scattered through space, forming a hierarchy of structure.
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Another difference of atomic gas from dark matter is that gas particles often collide, emitting photons in the process. As a result the gas loses energy, cools and sinks deeper towards the centers of dark matter clumps. This cooling process is important on galactic mass scales, up to 1012 Solar masses. Dark matter particles, on the other hand, interact very weakly and lose almost no energy in collisions. This explains why stars and gas are localized near the centers of dark matter halos.
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We will use the notation ABB to mean “after the big bang” throughout the rest of the book.
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There are also some additional factors that determine the mass (or size) of the first collapsed objects; we do not need to discuss this here in more detail.
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Perlov, D., Vilenkin, A. (2017). Structure Formation. In: Cosmology for the Curious. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57040-2_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57040-2_12
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57038-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57040-2
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