Molecular hydrogen as baryonic dark matter

Abstract

High-angular resolution CO observations of small-area molecular structures (SAMS) are presented. The feature-less structures seen in the single-dish measurements break up into several smaller clumps in the interferometer map. At an adopted distance of 100pc their sizes are of order a few hundred AU, some of which are still unresolved at an angular resolution of about 3". The clumps have a fractal structure with a fractal index between 1.7 and 2.0. Their kinetic temperature is between 7K and 18K. Adopting standard conversion factors masses are about 1/10 Jupiter-masses for individual clumps and densities are higher than 20000cm^{-3}. The clumps are highly overpressured and it is unknown what creates or maintains such structures.