The properties of pre-stellar cores

Stars like the Sun begin their lives as cold, dense cores of dust and gas that collapse under the influence of gravity until nuclear fusion is ignited. These cores contain hundreds to thousands of solar-masses of material and have gas densities about a thousand times greater than typical interstellar regions (the typical value is about one molecule per cubic centimeter). How the collapse process occurs in these embryos in poorly understood, from the number of stars that form to the factors that