Doubts on Current Theories of Star Formation:

[beecee]

http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/westerhout-43-star-formation-05962.html

New Study Casts Doubt on Currently Accepted Theories of Star Formation: 

An international team of astronomers has found that long-held assumptions about the relationship between the mass of star-forming clouds of dust and gas and the eventual mass of the star itself may not be as straightforward as scientists think. Their work is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

 

The underlying reasons as to why a star eventually grows to a specific mass has puzzled astronomers for years.

It has been assumed that a star’s mass mostly depends on the original structure — known as a star-forming core — from which stars are born.

 

more at.....http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/westerhout-43-star-formation-05962.html

 

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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0452-x

The unexpectedly large proportion of high-mass star-forming cores in a Galactic mini-starburst:

Abstract:

Understanding the processes that determine the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a critical unsolved problem, with profound implications for many areas of astrophysics1. In molecular clouds, stars are formed in cores—gas condensations sufficiently dense that gravitational collapse converts a large fraction of their mass into a star or small clutch of stars. In nearby star-formation regions, the core mass function (CMF) is strikingly similar to the IMF, suggesting that the shape of the IMF may simply be inherited from the CMF2,3,4,5. Here, we present 1.3 mm observations, obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array telescope, of the active star-formation region W43-MM1, which may be more representative of the Galactic-arm regions where most stars form6,7. The unprecedented resolution of these observations reveals a statistically robust CMF at high masses, with a slope that is markedly shallower than the IMF. This seriously challenges our understanding of the origin of the IMF.