How do you know if your lung collapses: Pneumothorax – Symptoms and causes
Know the Signs of a Collapsed Lung
You may have heard of a collapsed lung, but what exactly does that mean, and how do you treat it?
A collapsed lung, or pneumothorax, happens when air escapes from your lung and fills the space between the lung and chest wall. The lung is then not able to expand normally when you take a breath. The condition is rare but could be life-threatening, so you should seek immediate care.
Symptoms of a collapsed lung include:
- Dull, steady ache in the chest
- Pain upon inhaling
- Shortness of breath
- Chest tightness
- The sensation that you can’t draw breath
- Face turning blue due to lack of oxygen
- Very fast heartbeat
What Causes a Collapsed Lung?
Impact with Blunt Object. This is the leading cause of a collapsed lung. It can happen when playing sports where you might collide with a ball or person. A car crash can also involve an impact to the chest wherein this injury could occur.
Puncture. Any penetrating wound to the chest can puncture the lung. This could be something violent, like a knife or stab wound. It could also be the result of vigorous play, such as a pencil stabbing. An aerosol can exploding could also cause a collapsed lung.
Disease. Diseases such as emphysema and COPD can lead to a collapsed lung. Certain infections, such as pneumonia, can be the culprit, too.
Spontaneous pneumothorax. Very tall and typically very thin male young adults are especially prone. For these people, the pneumothorax can just occur; you don’t need to be hit in the chest or have other trauma for it to happen.
Hospital procedures. In the hospital, some medical procedures, such as the insertion of a chemotherapy port to your chest, can also sometimes damage your lung.
What To Do Immediately After Injury
The most pressing concern is to make sure oxygen is flowing.
Emergency services should be called immediately, and you will be administered oxygen as you are transported to a hospital.
When oxygen escapes from the lungs, they can’t function fully and properly. Supplying oxygen keeps the lungs working and helps replace some of the missing air. Psychologically, the sooner your breathing returns to a more normalized state, the sooner your body receives the signal to relax. Supplied oxygen can help the pneumothorax get smaller too.
How a Collapsed Lung Is Treated
Treatment is determined by how much of the lung is collapsed. If just a small portion is affected, your doctor may admit you to the hospital for observation. If you have a tiny wound, it can easily seal over.
If the affected area is larger, your doctor will evacuate the air that has escaped from the lung and is gathering in the chest cavity. Each time air gets pushed out from the lung, it is then trapped and pushing against the lung. Picture your lung as a balloon, and in this case, it’s pushed against a wall.
This misplaced air can also exert pressure on the heart, which is another reason to address the problem quickly.
Your doctor will explore all nonsurgical options. One of the first steps is to place a small chest tube with a suction device to evacuate the air from outside the lung.
A second course of treatment might be a patch through which your own blood can be inserted to seal the injury. Alternatively, another substance may be inserted through the chest tube to intentionally irritate the lung lining, causing it to stick together and seal up.
If the affected lung area doesn’t seal with these measures, your doctor can perform a video-assisted surgery to find where the air is escaping and repair it.
Your doctor will make the most conservative treatment choice possible, escalating only when necessary.
What To Do After Treatment
After the wound has been treated, it’s important that, for the next two to four weeks, you avoid:
- Flying on airplanes
- Scuba diving
- Playing a wind instrument
- Playing contact sports or participating in anything where a chest hit might occur
Once the injury has fully healed, you’re safe to resume these activities and your normal lifestyle.
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Collapsed lung (pneumothorax) Information | Mount Sinai
Air around the lung; Air outside the lung; Pneumothorax dropped lung; Spontaneous pneumothorax
A collapsed lung occurs when air escapes from the lung. The air then fills the space outside of the lung between the lung and chest wall. This buildup of air puts pressure on the lung, so it cannot expand as much as it normally does when you take a breath.
The medical name of this condition is pneumothorax.
The major features of the lungs include the bronchi, the bronchioles and the alveoli.
The alveoli are the microscopic blood vessel-lined sacks in which oxygen and carbon dioxide gas are exchanged.
Aortic rupture (a tear in the aorta, which is the major artery coming from the heart) can be seen on a chest X-ray. In this case, it was caused by a traumatic perforation of the thoracic aorta. This is how the X-ray appears when the chest is full of blood (right-sided hemothorax) seen here as cloudiness on the left side of the picture.
Pneumothorax occurs when air leaks from inside of the lung to the space between the lung and the chest wall. The lung then collapses. The dark side of the chest (right side of the picture) is filled with air that is outside of the lung tissue.
Air is breathed in through the nasal passageways, travels through the trachea and bronchi to the lungs.
The pleural cavity is the space between the layers of the membrane lining the lung (pleura) and the chest cavity.
The lungs are paired organs that lie in the thoracic cavity. The lungs extract oxygen from inhaled air and transport the oxygen to the blood. Surrounding the lungs is a very thin space called the pleural space. The pleural space is usually extremely thin, and filled with a small amount of fluid.
Causes
Collapsed lung can be caused by an injury to the lung. Injuries can include a gunshot or knife wound to the chest, rib fracture, or certain medical procedures.
In some cases, a collapsed lung is caused by air blisters of the lung (blebs) that break open, sending air into the space around the lung. This can result from air pressure changes such as when scuba diving or traveling to a high altitude.
Tall, thin people and smokers are more at risk for a collapsed lung.
Lung diseases can also increase the chance of getting a collapsed lung. These include:
- Asthma
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
- Cystic fibrosis
- Tuberculosis
- Whooping cough
In some cases, a collapsed lung occurs without any cause.
This is called a spontaneous collapsed lung or spontaneous pneumothorax.
Symptoms
Common symptoms of a collapsed lung include:
- Sharp chest or shoulder pain, made worse by a deep breath or a cough
- Shortness of breath
- Nasal flaring (from shortness of breath)
A larger pneumothorax causes more severe symptoms, including:
- Bluish color of the skin due to lack of oxygen
- Chest tightness
- Lightheadedness and near fainting
- Easy fatigue
- Abnormal breathing patterns or increased effort of breathing
- Rapid heart rate
- Shock and collapse
Exams and Tests
The health care provider will listen to your breathing with a stethoscope.
If you have a collapsed lung, there are decreased breath sounds or no breath sounds on the affected side. You may also have low blood pressure.
Tests that may be ordered include:
- Chest x-ray
- Arterial blood gases and other blood tests
- CT scan if other injuries or conditions are suspected
- Electrocardiogram (ECG)
Treatment
A small pneumothorax may go away on its own over time. You may only need oxygen treatment and rest.
The provider may use a needle to allow the air to escape from around the lung so it can expand more fully. You may be allowed to go home if you live near the hospital.
If you have a large pneumothorax, a chest tube will be placed between the ribs into the space around the lungs to help drain the air and allow the lung to re-expand.
The chest tube may be left in place for several days and you may need to stay in the hospital. If a small chest tube or flutter valve is used, you may be able to go home. You will need to return to the hospital to have the tube or valve removed.
Some people with a collapsed lung need extra oxygen.
Lung surgery may be needed to treat collapsed lung or to prevent future episodes. The area where the leak occurred may be repaired. Sometimes, a special chemical is placed into the area of the collapsed lung. This chemical causes a scar to form. This procedure is called pleurodesis.
Outlook (Prognosis)
If you have a spontaneous collapsed lung, you are more likely to have another one in the future if you:
- Are tall and thin
- Continue to smoke
- Have had two collapsed lung episodes in the past
How well you do after having a collapsed lung depends on what caused it.
Possible Complications
Complications may include any of the following:
- Another collapsed lung in the future
- Shock, if there are serious injuries or infection, severe inflammation, or fluid in the lung develops
When to Contact a Medical Professional
Contact your provider if you have symptoms of a collapsed lung, especially if you have had one before.
Prevention
There is no known way to prevent a collapsed lung. Following standard procedure can reduce the risk of a pneumothorax when scuba diving. You can decrease your risk by not smoking.
Hallifax R, Rahman NM. Pneumothorax. In: Broaddus VC, Ernst JD, King TE, et al, eds. Murray and Nadel’s Textbook of Respiratory Medicine. 7th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2022:chap 110.
Peak DA. Scuba diving and dysbarism. In: Walls RM, ed. Rosen’s Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice.
10th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2023:chap 131.
Raja AS. Thoracic trauma. In: Walls RM, ed. Rosen’s Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice. 10th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2023:chap 37.
Last reviewed on: 1/2/2023
Reviewed by: Jesse Borke, MD, CPE, FAAEM, FACEP, Attending Physician at Kaiser Permanente, Orange County, CA. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.
Publications / Bookmarks / Profile of Alpi / Habr
SergeyMakeev
Reading time
16 min
Views 103K
VK corporate blog Programming *Game development *Algorithms *Mathematics *
Hello everyone! My name is Sergey Makeev, and I’m a technical director at the Skyforge project in the Allods Team, the Mail.Ru Group game studio. I would like to talk about the rendering technologies that we use to create graphics in Skyforge.
I’ll tell you a little about the tasks that we faced when developing Skyforge from a programmer’s point of view. We have our own engine. It is expensive and difficult to develop our own technology, but the fact is that at the time the game was launched (three years ago) there was no technology that could satisfy all our requests. And we had to create the engine ourselves from scratch.
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Total votes 139: ↑132 and ↓7 +125
Comments
51
lozga
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10 min
Views 119K
Astronautics Games and game consoles
Tutorial
Animals and people learn by playing. In fact, what could be better – both interesting and informative. Computer games are no exception, with some of them you can learn. I was very surprised when, after searching Habr, I found out that the Orbiter space simulator was only briefly mentioned here a couple of times.
A free space simulator with an open architecture for addons and honest Newtonian physics turned out to be undeservedly overlooked. Probably because of its exactingness to a novice player.
How will we fight this and what can we learn?
Total votes 85: ↑84 and ↓1 +83
Comments
23
kbtsiberkin
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8 min
Views 45K
Popular science
Having written the previous post, historical and partly advertising (although potential applicants are unlikely to read this), you can move on to the conversation “essentially”. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to achieve a high degree of popularity of the description, but still I will try not to arrange a course of dry lectures. Although, it was not possible to get rid of dryness, and the post was written as a result for exactly a month.
This publication describes the basic equations of motion for an ideal and viscous fluid.
As far as possible, their derivation and physical meaning are briefly considered, and several simplest examples of their exact solutions are described. Alas, the analytically available solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations are largely exhausted by these few examples. Let me remind you that the Clay Institute has attributed the proof of the existence and smoothness of solutions to the problems of the millennium. Geniuses of the level of Perelman and above – the task awaits you. +37
Comments
39
BarsMonster
Reading time
10 min
Views 325K
Energy and batteries
As a child, I loved to read the magazine “Science and Life”, in the village there was a binder from the 60s. There they often talked about thermonuclear fusion in a joyful way – it’s almost there, and it will be! Many countries, in order to be in time for the distribution of free energy, built Tokamaks (and set up a total of 300 of them around the world).
The years have gone by… It’s 2013 and humanity still gets most of its energy from burning coal, like it did in the 19th century. Why it happened, what prevents the creation of a thermonuclear reactor, and what we can expect in the future – under the cut.
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Total votes 277: ↑273 and ↓4 +269
Comments
317
Genius_A
Reading time
7 min
Views 283K
Gadgets
I spent my childhood among people who were flying all the time. They built, developed a new one and immediately flew it. At the age of 5, it became a discovery for me that someone in this world can not fly. By the age of 26, I had managed to try almost everything that can be flown. I want to share my experience and talk about the available opportunities.
To start flying you have the following options:
1. Soarers (in this article)
- Paraglider
- Hang glider
- Glider
2.
Motor flight (second article)
- Light aircraft
- trike
- Paratrike
- Paramotor
- Motor glider
Start flying alone
Total votes 281: ↑261 and ↓20 +241
Comments
270
BarsMonster
Reading time
2 min
Views 286K
Gadgets History of IT Old hardware
Surely you paid attention to the computer with which young John Connor in Terminator 2 cracked the ATM PIN code and the access code to the laboratory. That computer was the Atari Portfolio. At the time of the film’s release (1991), he seemed to be something beyond fantasy. I was lucky to find it, and I want to share its review with you.
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Total votes 250: ↑246 and ↓4 +242
Comments
159
ami
Reading time
6 min
Views 130K
Artificial Intelligence Brain
Who among us has not thought at least once in his life about how to live forever?
This happened with me too.
It is possible to make a biological cell oriented to an infinite number of divisions, regardless of the type of cell.
But as a real techie, I understand that the human body is imperfect.
Eternal life for a biological individual can be achieved in two ways. Different in their complexity and opportunities that these solutions will provide.
1. Controlled infinite division of a biological cell
2. Transfer of consciousness to another more fault-tolerant medium.
The meaning of the article and the subsequent discussion is to investigate the theory precisely according to point 2, since it does not mean copying your personality, when your brain is copied into someone else, but at the same time you remain yourself, but the transfer of your brain to another medium, so much so that you do not stop your existence, thought continuum, self-awareness.
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Total votes 82: ↑60 and ↓22 +38
Comments
361
DIHALT
000Z” title=”2008-08-26, 01:28″> Aug 26 2008 at 01:28
Reading time
2 min
Views 23K
Robotics
As promised, I’m posting the power part of the robot. She has already got into the chassis on combat duty, so no more changes are planned.
Chassis assembly
Power supply.
We have a 12 volt lead battery, and the controller needs 5 volts. So I bungled a switching power supply. It was possible, of course, to put some kind of LM7805 (like on my breadboard) and relieve the voltage on it, but this is a stupid method. The thing is that the voltage difference LM7805 will burp in the form of heat. So the efficiency of this device will be below 50%, and we have battery power. So there is only one way out – this is a DC-DC conversion. As a controller, I took a time-tested, popular, affordable and cheap MC33063A . I did not invent anything and took a typical step-down circuit (Step – Down) from his datasheet.
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Total votes 113: ↑105.5 and ↓7.5 +98
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57
desperius
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8 min
Views 46K
Mathematics *
Sandbox
Translation of the article by Evan Miller – The Mathematiclal Hacker.
The programming profession is blessed with a large number of gifted authors. Today I will focus on three of my favorites – Eric Raymond, Paul Graham and Steve Yegge. I will do this because they do not seem to agree with me that mathematics has (and will have) value for the practical programmer.
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Total votes 100: ↑91 and ↓9 +82
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40
nikita2206
Reading time
15 min
Views 103K
Popular science Astronautics
Transl.
future time line”, and the first thing I saw was this site. I really liked this article and I decided to translate it, at the same time and subtract it better.
All that is stated here is only assumptions and theories, it is quite possible that all or some of the events will not be the same. The entire post is presented as a timeline from 10000 to 10 100 , and contains many interesting pictures and links to the wiki, a lot to read and interesting.
10,000 – 15,000 CE
Hypernova from the star system This Carina begins to influence our region of the Galaxy
This Carina is one of the largest and most unstable stars in our galaxy. Its temperature is so high that its gravity is not able to keep the gas flowing from its surface along the formed flows upwards, away from it. It was first seen in 1843 when its magnitude (read luminescence magnitude) reached -0.8, making it the second brightest star in the night sky.
She subsequently subsided for some time, and again “lit up” in the late 1990s.
This fluctuation continues with periodic flashing and fading, and will continue until the inevitable happens. Unable to cope with its own mass and density, it collapses and, then, turns into one of the most deadly forces known in nature – a hypernova.
For a while, this colossal explosion illuminates the entire galaxy. It will be bright enough to be seen during the daytime from Earth, while at night it is comparable to a full moon.
But far more damaging will be the lethal jets of gamma radiation ejected by a dying star. They will be ejected at such high energies that even systems thousands of light-years from Eta Carina will be affected. As a result, on numerous planets in our region of the Galaxy, the extinction of living organisms will occur at this time.
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Total votes 265: ↑257 and ↓8 +249
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239
godAlex
Reading time
5 min
Views 44K
Popular science Biotechnologies
It is said that all human inventions have been “seen” by nature, or at least have natural analogues; for example, an airplane in nature has an analogue – a bird.
Is there an analogue of a computer and computer programs?
This is a biological cell, which will be considered in this post from the point of view of a programmer, like a molecular computer . You will learn that many modern methods and algorithms for processing information did not appear in the 1980s, but many millions of years earlier.
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Total votes 125: ↑117 and ↓8 +109
Comments
73
peaceprayer
Reading time
10 min
Views 85K
History of IT
Translation
Introduction (by translator)
It just so happens that one of my favorite games is Warcraft II .
Every time this game is mentioned somewhere, or someone remembers about it, I usually get very happy. Before Warcraft II, was of course just Warcraft .
And something interesting happened recently – Patrick Wyatt (Patrick Wyatt), one of those people who stood at the origins of Blizzard, and the person who started the development of Warcraft, began a cycle of memories of those times.
The first article that I suggest you read below is about the beginning of Warcraft development. Where did the idea come from? about what kind of network the guys in the office had organized while they were dreaming about multiplayer; about EMS and the intricacies of DOS programming aesthetics; about the project team and so on.
I, alas, am not at all an expert in DOS development, so if readers point out to me inaccuracies in the translation related to technical details, I will be glad and correct it right away.
This applies, of course, and any other inaccuracies, typos, punctuation and style.
A long time ago, in the early days when PC games were written under the DOS operating system, I started working on a game called Warcraft.
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Total votes 213: ↑200 and ↓13 +187
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114
Zigmar
Reading time
1 min
Views 6.
5K
Cyberpunk Popular science AR and VR
As a graduation project, several students of the Israeli Bezalel Academy of Arts made an excellent short film about what our life can (and most likely will) look like with the spread of augmented reality technologies. Although the film uses devices that are a couple of generations ahead of current technology like the Google Glass prototype, I have no doubt that socially and technologically everything is going to the fact that such technologies and the ways they are used will become ubiquitous. Since you think how much time will pass before we, like the main character, watch TV on an empty wall, cooking will turn into a social game with “achievements”, and during a date a special application will suggest the necessary phrases and more …? Is it a matter of decades or is it just around the corner?
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Total votes 97: ↑77 and ↓20 +57
Comments
274
atomlib
000Z” title=”2012-07-21, 08:42″> Jul 21 2012 at 08:42
Reading time
2 min
Views 8.8K
Popular science Biotechnologies
Scientists at Stanford have made a huge step forward: for the first time, a complete digital model of the body and its entire life cycle has been created. To create a computer model of the tiny bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, it was necessary to write 28 independent modules interacting with each other, simulating the processes of a living cell and operating 1.900 parameters. 900 different scientific reports have been used to describe their behavior. The complexity of the model is high: only the process of unicellular division requires 10 hours of simulation, and the output is half a gigabyte of data.
Mycoplasma genitalium is a simple parasite that lives in the genitourinary and respiratory tracts. The bacterium attracts researchers primarily because of the size of its genetic apparatus — M. genitalium has only 525 genes, while the more traditional laboratory E.
coli has 4,288. Despite the nature of the microorganism and the difficulties in working with the parasite, the small number of genes makes it attractive to bioengineers: it was with the participation of M. genitalium that an artificial chromosome was first created in 2008.
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Total votes 97: ↑90 and ↓7 +83
Comments
81
aidus
Reading time
16 min
Views 17K
Artificial Intelligence
Sandbox
From universal intelligence to strong AI. Prospects for creating a strong artificial intelligence
The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought a lot of remarkable practical results in terms of automating human activities in various fields, which is gradually changing the face of our civilization. However, the ultimate goal – the creation of truly intelligent machines (strong AI) has not yet been achieved.
At the same time, there are few scientists who really doubt that such a strong AI in one form or another can be created. If any objections are heard, then they are of a religious nature, appealing to the presence of a non-material soul in a person. But even with such radical views on the non-material world, only such conceptually complex phenomena as free will, creativity or feelings are written off, without denying the possibility of endowing a machine with behavior almost indistinguishable from a person. Much less unambiguous are the answers to the questions, when and how exactly can strong AI be created?
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Total votes 42: ↑30 and ↓12 +18
Comments
132
arozhankov
Reading time
12 min
Views 566K
Energy and batteries
My story will consist of three parts.
1 part. Grounding
(general information, terms and definitions)
Part 2.
Traditional ways of building grounding devices
(description, calculation, installation)
Part 3. Modern ways of building grounding devices
(description, calculation, installation)
In the first part (theory), I will describe the terminology, the main types of grounding (appointment) and the requirements for grounding.
In the second part (practice) there will be a story about traditional solutions used in the construction of grounding devices, listing the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions.
The third part (practice) in a sense will continue the second. It will contain a description of new technologies used in the construction of grounding devices. As in the second part, with a list of the advantages and disadvantages of these technologies.
If the reader has theoretical knowledge and is only interested in practical implementation, it is better for him to skip the first part and start reading from the second part.
If the reader has the necessary knowledge and wants to get acquainted only with new products, it is better to skip the first two parts and go straight to reading the third one.
My view of the described methods and solutions is somewhat one-sided. I ask the reader to understand that I do not put forward my material as a comprehensive objective work and express my point of view, my experience in it.
Some of the text is a compromise between accuracy and the desire to explain in “human language”, therefore simplifications are allowed that can “cut the ear” of a technically savvy reader.
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Total votes 199: ↑183 and ↓16 +167
Comments
217
Tiberius
Reading time
9 min
Views 49K
Popular science Biotechnologies Nanotechnologies
Dedicated to one wonderful person…
Already from the second publication from the “Inside Look” series, the idea arose to look at the simple objects that surround us every day under a microscope, and this resonated with Habra residents.
In addition, Anton Voitsekhovsky supported this idea, and a variety of objects have already been under the barrel of an electron microscope: from flowers to shadows. Therefore, this publication will be far from IT topics, but, firstly, I think it is useful in order to broaden one’s horizons, and, secondly, it still contains a drop of IT – all this would not have happened without such a rapid development of computer technique and its application in electron microscopy.
Under the cut there will be a lot of pictures and very little text to clarify what is happening.
Open Sesame!
Total votes 173: ↑164 and ↓9 +155
Comments
77
si14
Reading time
8 min
Views 9.1K
Biotechnologies
Introduction
I think all users of Habr are familiar with the successes of mankind in the field of microelectronics, the vast majority – the conquest of space, a considerable part – physics.
But almost no one knows that right now a revolution is taking place in biology that will change our lives in the next few decades no less than the spread of computers. Moreover, this revolution is directly related to the success in building powerful computing systems. Of course, some “circles on the water” diverge. But not everyone is able to compare the hysteria in the media regarding GMOs, the word “recombinant” on a vial of interferon or insulin, and vague (in Russia) rumors about a certain 23andme. In fact, all these phenomena are connected by one thread. And it is better to unravel this thread from the very beginning.
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Total votes 129: ↑124 and ↓5 +119
Comments
124
alizar
Reading time
2 min
Views 7K
Biotechnologies
A team of researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong has found a way to encrypt and store data in bacteria.
Approximately 900 TB of information is placed in 1 g of living material. The project is called Bioencryption (see presentation), and it was created for the international competition iGEM-2010 (International Genetically Engineered Machine).
Encryption is carried out using the DNA shuffle method. Reading information from bacteria is confirmed by a checksum.
For data storage, as one might expect, a quaternary number system is used, according to the number of nucleotides (0 = A, 1 = T, 2 = C, 3 = G).
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Total votes 130: ↑115 and ↓15 +100
Comments
214
intnzy
Reading time
6 min
Views 27K
History of IT
Translation
Translation of “The Ubiquitous Reed-Solomon Codes” by Barry A. Cipra from SIAM news, file 26-1, January 1993.
*****
In our so-called information age, there is no need to remind anyone that not only speed, but also error-freeness is important for storing, searching and transmitting data.
The principle of “what you sow, so you reap” in this case does not always work. Machines make mistakes, and their miscalculations, through no human fault, can turn a perfectly written program into useless and even dangerous trash. Just as architects design buildings that don’t collapse even in an earthquake, their computer colleagues have come up with sophisticated tricks that can counteract the manifestations of Murphy’s law in the digital world.
However, many people using modern technology may not be aware of the importance of a five-page article that appeared in 1960 in the Journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In this article
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Total votes 42: ↑37 and ↓5 +32
Comments
22
There are more homeless planets in the Universe than ordinary ones
Planets for us are gas giants or solid worlds orbiting the parent star. And while the stars are leaving, the Milky Way is littered with hundreds of billions of such planets, including our own, the only and so far unique Earth.
And each planet, in principle, has its own and also unique birth and life history . Some of them are massive and bright, others are small and dim; some were born a couple of million years ago, others can compete with the age of the universe itself. But there is one common feature that we endow all these planets with: the solar system. As the Kepler mission and other searches for exoplanets have shown, if you want to find planets, just point your finger at a star and look around it: around it you will find one, but a whole system of planets.
Each planet in our solar system has its own history
Planets without stars
And yet – in addition to the stars and all the bodies that revolve around them – there must be a great many planets not attached to the central star at all: rogue planets. Scientists believe this is true anywhere in the universe, from small star clusters and interstellar space to the cores of giant galaxies. As far as we know, there are as many starless planets in space as there are stars themselves – and maybe more.
It follows that for every point of light you see, there are many more massive points that you can’t see because they don’t emit visible light.
There are a huge number of starless planets in space.
You can also find all the latest news from the world of high technologies in Google News.
Through observations, we have discovered a number of possible candidates for the rogue planet . “Candidate” is an important word; we cannot be sure that these planets are true, because we do not have a good technique for confirming this fact. Even with our best modern equipment, they are so difficult to detect that we must assume the existence of many more worlds than we have already found. But we have already found something and can draw conclusions. Where do these alien planets come from?
One of the most convincing sources of all these planets is near us, and we cherish it very much.
Protoplanetary disk around a star
We know how solar systems form: after gravitational collapse creates a region of space in which fusion ignites, a protoplanetary disk gathers around the central star.
Gravitational perturbations regularly appear in this disk, drawing more and more matter from its surroundings, while the heat of the newly formed central star slowly blows the lightest gas into the interstellar medium. Over time, gravitational perturbations develop into asteroids, solid planets and gas giants.
But the fact is that these worlds not only revolve around their star, but also gravitationally pull each other together. Over time, these planets migrate to the most stable configurations they can achieve: the most massive worlds take their most stable places, often sacrificing other smaller worlds. What happens to the “losers” in the cosmic battle for planetary advantage? They are absorbed in the process of merging, fall into the Sun or are ejected from the solar system into interstellar space.
Solar system simulations
Recent simulations have shown that for every planet-rich solar system like our own (with gas giants), at least one gas giant will be ejected into the interstellar medium, where it will be doomed to wander the galaxy by a wandering planet – an outcast.
At the same time, the number of smaller solid worlds thrown out of the system can reach 5-10. This, in principle, is the largest source of rogue planets, and there are probably hundreds of billions of them in our own galaxy.
It is especially funny that when scientists do theoretical calculations, the number of ejected planets from young solar systems is half the expected number of rogue planets. Where do they come from then? To understand where most starless planets come from, we need to take a broader look at one time: not only when our solar system formed, but also at the cluster of stars (and star systems) that formed at the same time.
The formation of stars and galaxies gives us an understanding of where rogue planets come from
Star clusters form from the slow collapse of cold gas, mostly hydrogen, and usually originate in a pre-existing galaxy. Deep in the collapsing clouds gravitational instabilities form and the first, most massive instabilities attract more and more matter.
When enough matter is collected in a small region of space and the density and temperature in the core become high enough, nuclear fusion begins and stars form.
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But not one star and star system is born, but many of them, because each cloud that collapses to form a new star contains enough material to form many stars. Along with this, something happens. The largest formed star is also the hottest and bluest, that is, it emits the most ionizing, ultraviolet radiation. And this star is starting one of the most active races to take his place in space.
If you look into the star-forming nebula, you can see two processes occurring simultaneously:
- Gravity is trying to pull matter in the direction of this young, growing gravitational overdensity
- Radiation is burning out neutral gas and pushing it back into the interstellar medium
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Who will win?
There are different types of stars
The answer depends on what counts as a victory.
The largest gravitational superdensities form the largest, hottest, and bluest stars—but such stars are exceedingly rare. Smaller superdensities (still large) form other stars, but as the mass decreases, more and more of them become. That is why, when we look deep into a cluster of young stars, it is easy to see the brightest (blue or otherwise) stars, but they are greatly outnumbered by yellow (and red) stars with less mass. 9Can planets grow? Stars (in the main sequence) come in different types , from O stars (the hottest, biggest and bluest) to M stars (the smallest, coolest, reddest and low mass). And although the majority of stars – ¾ – are M-class stars, and less than 1% of all stars are O- or B-type stars, the total mass of the last two types of stars is comparable to the total mass of M-type stars. It takes about 250 M-class stars to match the mass of an O star.
Classification of stars
As it turns out, about 90% of the original gas and dust that was in this star-forming nebula is blown out into the interstellar medium and does not go into star formation.
The most massive stars form faster and begin to blow material out of the nebula. In just a couple of million years, there is less and less material left, and new stars stop forming. The remaining gas with dust completely burn out.
And now the most interesting part. Not only M-class stars – with a mass between 8% and 40% of the Sun – represent the most common type of stars in the Universe. There’s a lot more to what could be M-class stars if the high-mass stars didn’t burn out the excess material.
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In other words, for every star formed, there are many more failed stars that simply did not reach critical mass: and there can be tens to hundreds of thousands of such stars for every star formed.
Just imagine: our own solar system contains hundreds or even thousands of objects that potentially fit the geophysical definition of a planet, but have been astronomically ruled out just by virtue of their orbital position.
Now imagine that for every star like our Sun, there are hundreds of failed stars that simply haven’t gained enough mass to trigger fusion in the core. These are homeless planets – or rogue planets – which are much more than planets like ours, orbiting stars. Orphan planets may or may not have an atmosphere and are extremely difficult to detect, especially the smallest ones. But think about it: for every planet like ours in the galaxy, there could be up to 100,000 planets that not only don’t orbit the star now, but never did. Finding them is very difficult.
Rogue planets roam the vastness of space
So while we may have a few planets ejected from young solar systems, and even a handful of such worlds in a galaxy originally from the solar system, the vast majority of all planets in the galaxy have never held onto stars . Rogue planets roam the galaxy, doomed to forever wandering in the darkness of and never know the warmth of their parent star. Their potential parents, perhaps, never even became stars.