Can molecular clouds live long?
arXiv:1407.3356 · doi:10.1007/s10509-014-2084-7
Abstract
It is generally accepted that the lifetime of molecular clouds does not exceed yr due to disruption by stellar feedback. We put together some arguments giving evidence that a substantial fraction of molecular clouds (primarily in the outer regions of a disc) may avoid destruction process for at least yr or even longer. A molecular cloud can live long if massive stars are rare or absent. Massive stars capable to destroy a cloud may not form for a long time if a cloud is low massive, or stellar initial mass function is top-light, or if there is a delay of the beginning of active star formation. A long duration of the inactive phase of clouds may be reconciled with the low amount of the observed starless giant molecular clouds if to propose that they were preceded by slowly contraction phase of the magnetized dark gas, non-detected in CO-lines.
Submitted to Ap&SS, 9 pages, 1 figure
References in corpus (60)
- The Spitzer c2d Legacy Results: Star Formation Rates and Efficiencies; Evolution and Lifetimes
- From filamentary clouds to prestellar cores to the stellar IMF: Initial highlights from the Herschel Gould Belt survey
- The Dark Molecular Gas
- Re-examining Larson's Scaling Relationships in Galactic Molecular Clouds
- The Role of Pressure in GMC Formation II: The H_2 - Pressure Relation
- The Disruption of Giant Molecular Clouds by Radiation Pressure and the Efficiency of Star Formation in Galaxies
- Planck Early Results: All sky temperature and dust optical depth from Planck and IRAS: Constraints on the "dark gas" in our galaxy
- Ram pressure stripping and galaxy orbits: The case of the Virgo cluster
- Star Formation Efficiencies and Lifetimes of Giant Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way
- Physical Properties and Galactic Distribution of Molecular Clouds identified in the Galactic Ring Survey
- A Herschel [CII] Galactic plane survey I: the global distribution of ISM gas components
- A Minimum Column Density of 1 g cm^-2 for Massive Star Formation
- The Structure of the Interstellar Medium of Star Forming Galaxies
- The Second Survey of the Molecular Clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud by NANTEN. II. Star Formation
- Evidence for top-heavy stellar initial mass functions with increasing density and decreasing metallicity
- Evidence for a Non-Uniform Initial Mass Function in the Local Universe
- The PdBI Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey (PAWS): Environmental Dependence of Giant Molecular Cloud Properties in M51
- Gas Stripping in Simulated Galaxies with a Multiphase ISM
- The relation between the most-massive star and its parental star cluster mass
- Radial variation of attenuation and star formation in the largest late-type disks observed with GALEX
- Importance of the Initial Conditions for Star Formation - I. Cloud Evolution and Morphology
- The Exciting Lives of Giant Molecular Clouds
- Chemistry of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy: a Top-Light IMF, Outflows and the R-Process
- Dynamically Driven Evolution of the Interstellar Medium in M51
- Why are most molecular clouds not gravitationally bound?
- Modelling CO formation in the turbulent interstellar medium
- Cold gas properties of the Herschel Reference Survey. III. Molecular gas stripping in cluster galaxies
- Abundant Molecular Gas in Tidal Dwarf Galaxies: On-going Galaxy Formation
- Observational Constraints on the Ages of Molecular Clouds and the Star-Formation Timescale: Ambipolar-Diffusion--Controlled or Turbulence-Induced Star Formation?
- High-resolution simulations of galaxy mergers: Resolving globular cluster formation
- Molecular hydrogen deficiency in HI-poor galaxies and its implications for star formation
- Six Myths on the Virial Theorem for Interstellar Clouds
- Giant Molecular Clouds in the Local Group Galaxy M33
- Kinematics of tidal tails in interacting galaxies: Tidal Dwarf Galaxies and projection effects
- The galaxy-wide IMF of dwarf late-type to massive early-type galaxies
- The Formation of Molecular Clouds
- Resolved Giant Molecular Clouds in Nearby Spiral Galaxies: Insights from the CANON CO (1-0) Survey
- The Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey: X.The relationship between cold dust and molecular gas content in Virgo spirals
- Physical properties of high-mass clumps in different stages of evolution
- The alignment of molecular cloud magnetic fields with the spiral arms in M33
- Fermi LAT study of cosmic-rays and the interstellar medium in nearby molecular clouds
- UV Emission from Stellar Populations within Tidal Tails: Catching the Youngest Galaxies in Formation?
- Giant Molecular clouds: what are they made from, and how do they get there?
- Star Clusters in the Tidal Tails of Interacting Galaxies: Cluster Populations Across a Variety of Tail Environments
- Is the Initial Mass Function of Low Surface Brightness Galaxies Dominated by Low Mass Stars?
- The Universal Initial Mass Function In The XUV Disk of M83
- Collisional debris as laboratories to study star formation
- On the Nature of Star Formation at Large Galactic Radii
- Interpreting the sub-linear Kennicutt-Schmidt relationship: The case for diffuse molecular gas
- The symmetries and scaling of tidal tails in galaxies
- Molecular Gas Evolution across a Spiral Arm in M 51
- The portrait of Malin 2: a case study of a giant low surface brightness galaxy
- Star formation in HI tails: HCG 92, HCG 100 and 6 interacting systems
- Searching for Star Formation Outside Galaxies: Multiwavelength Analysis of the Intragroup Medium of HCG100
- Emission sparks around M 81 and in some dSph galaxies
- The Pressure of an Equilibrium Interstellar Medium in Galactic Disks
- Tidal Tails of Minor Mergers: Star Formation Efficiency in the Western Tail of NGC 2782
- Atomic and Molecular Gas Components in Spiral Galaxies of the Virgo Cluster
- Do Disk Galaxies with Abnormally Low Mass-to-Light Ratios Exist?
- Galaxies with unusually high abundances of molecular hydrogen