Besides these organized flows, nebulae of all types always show chaotic motions called turbulence. This is a well-known phenomenon in gas dynamics that results when there is low viscosity in flowing fluids, so the motions become chaotic eddies that transfer kinetic and magnetic energy and momentum from large scales down to small sizes. On small-enough scales viscosity always becomes important, and the energy is converted into heat, which is kinetic energy on a molecular scale. Turbulence in nebulae has profound, but poorly understood, effects on their energy balance and pressure support.

Turbulence is observed by means of the widths of the emission or absorption lines in a nebular spectrum. No line can be precisely sharp in wavelength, because the energy levels of the atom or ion from which it arises are not precisely sharp. Actual lines are usually much broader than this intrinsic width because of the Doppler effect arising from motions of the atoms along the line of sight. The emission line of an atom is shifted to longer wavelengths if it is receding from the observer and to shorter wavelengths if it is approaching. Part of the observed broadening is easily explained by thermal motions, since v², the averaged squared speed, is proportional to T/m, where T is the temperature and m is the mass of the atom. Thus, hydrogen atoms move the fastest at any given temperature. Observations show that in fact hydrogen lines are broader than those of other elements but not as much as expected from thermal motions alone. Turbulence represents bulk motions, independent of the mass of the atoms. This chaotic motion of gas atoms of all masses would explain the observations. The physical question, though, is what maintains the turbulence. Why do the turbulent cascades not carry kinetic energy from large-size scales into ever-shorter-size scales and finally into heat?

The answer is that energy is continuously injected into the gases by a variety of processes. One involves strong stellar winds from hot stars, which are blown off at speeds of thousands of kilometres per second. Another arises from the violently expanding remnants of supernova explosions, which sometimes start at 20,000 km (12,000 miles) per second and gradually slow to typical cloud speeds (10 km [6 miles] per second). A third process is the occasional collision of clouds moving in the overall galactic gravitational potential. All these processes inject energy on large scales that can undergo turbulent cascading to heat.

Galactic magnetic field

There is a pervasive magnetic field that threads the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy and extends to thousands of light-years above the galactic plane. The evidence for the existence of this field comes from radio synchrotron emission produced by very energetic electrons moving through it and from the polarization of starlight that is produced by elongated dust grains that tend to be aligned with the magnetic field. The magnetic field is very strongly coupled to the gas because it acts upon the embedded electrons, even the few in H I regions, and the electrons impart some motion of the other constituents by means of collisions. The gas and field are effectively confined to moving together, even though the gas can slip along the field freely. The field has an important influence upon the turbulence because it exerts a pressure similar to gas pressure, thereby influencing the motions of the gas. The resulting complex interactions and wave motions have been studied in extensive numerical calculations.