"giant molecular clouds"

Steve Pope wrote:
snip
Are these objects -- "giant molecular clouds" -- verified to exist?
Is "giant molecular cloud" the accepted term for them?

In one hypothesis, most of what you see in the night sky within 1000
parsecs (3,260 light-years) is the result of a GMC or supercloud with a
mass of ~2×10^7 million suns running into Milky Way's galactic plane
about 100 million years ago.

Olano, C.A. Jan. 2001. The Origin of the Local System of Gas and Stars.
AJ121:295-308
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/np...J....121..295O

"Supercloud" is another term used for GMCs.

- Canopus56