CACHMC is a legacy project of the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF).
Scientific Aims
The conversion of turbulent structures within molecular clouds into high-mass stars and star clusters, the relation
between Galactic and extragalactic star formation, and the effects of Galactic environment on star formation are
fundamentally important, yet unsolved problems in astrophysics. The two major theories for high-mass star formation,
"competitive accretion" and "turbulent core accretion", make distinct predictions about the initial conditions within
star-forming clumps and how the gas on ~1 pc "clump" scales affects the accretion history of individual stars on ~0.05
pc "core" scales at which individual stars and binary stars form.
A number of recently completed dust continuum (HiGAL, ATLASGAL, BGPS) and molecular line (MALT90, HOPS) surveys toward
thousands of dense molecular clumps have characterised their physical and chemical conditions on pc scales. After
decades of effort, we have finally located the sites of all current and future Galactic high-mass star formation. Now
that pc "clump" scale conditions have been measured, in order to directly test the theories, we require observations of
the smaller size scales down to 0.05 pc "core" scales. These observations will be used to characterise the turbulent
structure within the clumps and to directly measure the locations, temperatures, masses, temporal sequence and
kinematics of their individual ~0.05 pc size star-forming cores.