| 4 | | There isn’t a lot of evidence of magnetization on large, GMC scale clouds, but at least there is fairly good evidence that nearby Taurus, and the Riegel-Crutcher cloud, are magnetically dominated. While ultimately, the importance of fields (relative to other factors such as turbulence) in star formation will come down to observations, currently, this is lacking. So in the meantime, they want to study how *diffuse*, magnetized structures, similar to the Taurus cloud, evolve to form stars. Again, it is unclear how representative these clouds are, but for them, they’re trying to pin down these kinds of examples.. |
| | 5 | There is a long standing debate on the relative importance of turbulence vs. magnetic support in SF. Early studies in the 80's and 90's focused on magnetic support -- studying how stars can form out of quiescent, magnetically supported clouds (Nakano, Shu, Mouschovias). This ties into the idea of long lived clouds. More recently, 2000's, people have been looking at how turbulence manifests in star forming environments, and how the SF is effected by it. The ultimate test will be from observations - they need to tell us something about the magnetic field strengths inside of clouds -- which is a hard thing to nail down. |
| | 6 | |
| | 7 | There isn’t a lot of evidence of magnetization in clouds. Nearby Taurus and Riegel-Crutcher HI cloud appear to be magnetized at least in their diffuse regions (Heyer '08, !McClure-Griffiths '06). Field strength is estimated on the 10's of micro Gauss scale in these regions. These regions may or may not be representative. |
| | 8 | |
| | 9 | While ultimately, the importance of fields (relative to other factors such as turbulence) in star formation will come down to observations, currently, this is lacking. So in the meantime, they want to study how *diffuse*, magnetized structures, similar to the Taurus cloud, evolve to form stars. |
