event
Wednesday 20 Jan 2016: Seminar: GMC Populations of Nearby Galaxies
Dr Annie Hughes - IRAP, Toulouse
Physics, 4th floor 14:00-15:00
The structure of the molecular interstellar medium on the scale of individual giant molecular clouds (GMCs) is an important quantity for models of star formation, and one that is often invoked to explain the observed correlations between gas and star formation on kiloparsec-scale in nearby galaxies. In this talk, I will highlight new results from recent wide-field, cloud-scale imaging surveys of CO emission in nearby galaxies that have provided important new insights into the timescales of GMC evolution, the mass distribution of the molecular ISM, and the emergence of a kiloparsec-scale star formation law from the physical properties of individual clouds. These results underscore the importance of galactic environment on the evolution of GMCs, and on a galaxy's global pattern of star formation.
