Jeans Instability

Jeans instability describes a process in space where large clouds of gas become dense enough that gravity overcomes internal pressure, causing them to collapse and form stars. When regions within these clouds reach a critical size and mass, gravity pulls the gas particles together faster than they can disperse, leading to condensation. This threshold, known as the Jeans length, depends on the cloud's temperature and density. Essentially, Jeans instability explains how some parts of interstellar gas clouds naturally transition from diffuse gas to dense regions that ignite star formation.