Characterizing interstellar filaments with Herschel in IC5146 (D. Arzoumanian et al.)

Vol. 529In section 1. Letters

Characterizing interstellar filaments with Herschel in IC5146

One striking result from the Galactic plane observations by Herschel has been the discovery of the profusion of filamentary structures within molecular clouds. The origin of these structures and their relevance to star formation are clearly linked questions whose answers may be fundamental. This Letter by Arzoumanian et al. adds a new piece of evidence in that they find that in three nearby (< 1kpc) clouds, the filament diameters cluster around 0.1 parsec. The reason for this is not clear, but the authors point out that 0.1 parsec is approximately the size on which molecular cloud turbulence becomes subsonic.