The Birth of Suns - science presentation by Mark Krumholz, U.C.Santa Cruz professor of Ast

We normally think of space as empty, but it's not. The space between the stars in our Galaxy contains, on average, about 1 atom per cubic centimeter. That's a better vacuum than the best vacuum chamber we know how to make, but there are a lot of cubic centimeters in interstellar space, and the mass between the stars of our Galaxy adds up to about 10% of the mass of all the stars. It is from this interstellar medium that new stars are continually born, at a rate of about 1 new Sun per year. In this talk Mr. Krumholz describes our current understanding of the gas in interstellar space, and how and why it condenses to make new stars.