The Gravitational Collapse of a Uniform Spheroid.

Abstract

A uniform, non-rotating, pressure-free spheroid is supposed to collapse gravitationally from rest. It is shown that the initial eccentricity is steadily increased by the anisotropic gravitational field: an initially oblate spheroid tends toward a disk, and an initially prolate spheroid toward a spindle. Numerical results are computed for a series of initial eccentricities.