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The origin and lifetime of giant molecular cloud complexes
Abstract
From the available observational and theoretical evidence it is argued that the mass of molecular gas in the Galaxy has been considerably overestimated and that the ages of the giant molecular complexes do not exceed a few times 10-million years. An expression derived for the collisional time scale for clumps in a complex has a maximum value of 10-million yr. It is argued that the formation of giant complexes by random collisional agglomeration of small molecular clouds is incompatible with several firm observational results. The Parker instability is discussed as a possible formation mechanism which can explain many of the observed properties of the complexes.
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Citations
Cited by
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Mac Low, M.-M., & Klessen, R. S. (2004) · Reviews of Modern Physics · doi:10.1103/revmodphys.76.125 · Cited by 1,761
Rapid Formation of Molecular Clouds and Stars in the Solar Neighborhood
Hartmann, L., Ballesteros‐Paredes, J., & Bergin, E. A. (2001) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.1086/323863 · Cited by 567
Gravitational Collapse in Turbulent Molecular Clouds. I. Gasdynamical Turbulence
Klessen, R. S., Heitsch, F., & Mac Low, M. (2000) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.1086/308891 · Cited by 419
An Integrated Spectrophotometric Survey of Nearby Star‐forming Galaxies
Moustakas, J., & Kennicutt, Jr. (2006) · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · doi:10.1086/500971 · Cited by 314
Metadata
- Authors
- Blitz, L., & Shu, F. H.
- Venue
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Publisher
- American Astronomical Society
- Published
- 1980-05
- Volume
- 238
- Pages
- 148
- ISSN
- 0004-637X (ISSN-L)
- 1538-4357
- OpenAlex
- W2008848988
- Cited by
- 382
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 21.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Blitz, L., & Shu, F. H. (1980). The origin and lifetime of giant molecular cloud complexes. The Astrophysical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1086/157968
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