Download or read book Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium written by Lyman Spitzer, Jr. and published by Wiley-VCH. This book was released on 1998-03-23 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium discusses the nature of interstellar matter, with a strong emphasis on basic physical principles, and summarizes the present state of knowledge about the interstellar medium by providing the latest observational data. Physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium are treated, with frequent references to observational results. The overall equilibrium and dynamical state of the interstellar gas are described, with discussions of explosions produced by star birth and star death and the initial phases of cloud collapse leading to star formation.