After reading the article below, really started thinking about how similar this was to "protoshares" concept. A protostar is an early star as it forms...when it finally collapses, an entire solar system complete with planets and (possibly) life. This was the inspiration for the image above.
Feel free to use/alter this if you want as I intend on making more of them as I learn the necessary skills to flesh out the social media sites we are constructing for "Beyond Bitcoin".
From: Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protostar
Star formation begins in giant molecular clouds. These clouds are initially balanced between gravitational forces, which work to collapse the cloud, and pressure forces (primarily from the gas) which work to keep the cloud from collapsing. When these forces fall out of balance, such as due to a supernova shock wave, the cloud begins to collapse and fragment into smaller and smaller fragments. The smallest of these fragments begin contracting and become protostars.
As the cloud continues to contract, it begins to increase in temperature. The temperature increase is not caused by nuclear reactions but rather by the conversion of gravitational energy to thermal kinetic energy. As a particle (atom or molecule) falls towards the centre of the contracting fragment, its gravitational energy decreases. As the total energy of the particle must remain constant (due to conservation of energy), the reduction in gravitational potential energy results in an increase in the particle's kinetic energy. The kinetic energy of a group of particles is the thermal kinetic energy, or temperature, of the cloud. The more the cloud contracts the more the temperature increases.
Collisions between molecules often leave them in excited states which can emit radiation as those states decay. At the temperatures of a protostar (10 to 20 kelvins) most of the radiation is in the microwave or infrared range of the spectrum. At this early stage of star formation, most of this radiation escapes, preventing a rapid rise in temperature of the cloud. This stage of protostar evolution is known as the isothermal phase.
As the cloud contracts the number density of the molecules increases, making it more difficult for the emitted radiation to escape. In effect, the gas becomes opaque to the radiation and the temperature within the cloud will begin to rise more rapidly. The gas cloud still has much more gas at this stage, called a Class 0 protostar.
As the system evolves, more and more emission starts to come from the protostar rather than the surrounding dust and gas. In the Class I stage, the protostar is now about the same mass as the surrounding envelope.
The next stage of protostar evolution is the classic T Tauri star (a.k.a. Class II protostar). In this phase, the temperature increases substantially and this disk becomes substantially smaller than the protostar. In the final stage of protostar evolution, the temperature rises and the surrounding material becomes an order of magnitude smaller, becoming a Class III protostar ('weak' T Tauri star). [2]
Infrared measurements taken by the 2MASS and WISE astronomical surveys have been particularly effective at unveiling numerous protostars and their host star clusters.[3][4]
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