An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
English-French-Persian

To grow together; to come together so as to form one whole, to fuse. → merge; → fusion.

From L. coalescere, from co- + al-, stem of alere "to nourish, make grow" + -esce, from -escere, a suffix conveying an inchoative meaning.

Âhamidan, from â- nuance prefix + ham "together" (Av. hama- "similar, the same;" Skt. samah "even, level, similar, identical;" Gk. hama "together with, at the same time," homos "one and the same," PIE *samos "same," from base *sem- "one, together") + -idan infinitive suffix.

1) General: The act or state of growing together, as similar parts; the act of uniting by natural affinity or attraction; the state of being united.
2) Merging of the stars composing a → binary system after having undergone → supernova explosion. General relativity predicts that binary systems of → compact objects will emit energy in the form of → gravitational radiation, and that this loss of energy eventually will lead to the coalescence of the system.

Verbal noun from → coalesce.

A scenario for building up → massive stars through merging of → intermediate-mass protostars. It occurs in the cores of dense stellar clusters that have undergone core contraction due to rapid → accretion of gas with low → specific angular momentum. The required densities are, however, very high, 10⁸ stars pc^-3, which are extremely rare (Bonnell et al. 1998, MNRAS 298, 93).

→ coalescence; → model.