* Astronomy

During the Antarctic winter of 2003, SPARO surveyed the large-scale magnetic fields of four Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs). We have recently been able to set constraints on the characteristic magnetic field strength in GMCs by combining these SPARO results with (a) results for small-scale fields obtained using the Hertz instrument on Mauna Kea and (b) simulated polarization maps developed by theorists. We find that the total magnetic field energy (including both uniform and fluctuating components) is comparable to or greater than the kinetic energy corresponding to turbulent gas motions. Such strong fields are expected to play important roles in the star formation process that occurs in GMCs.

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