Evidence for Dynamically Important Magnetic Fields in Molecular Clouds
  Recent observational evidence that magnetic fields are dynamically important
in molecular clouds, compared to self-gravity and turbulence, is reviewed and
illustrated with data from the NGC 2024 region. One piece of evidence,
turbulence anisotropy, was found in the diffuse envelope of a cloud (Av~1;
Heyer et al. 2008); our data further suggests turbulence anisotropy in the
cloud (Av >7) and even near the cloud core (Av~100). The data also shows that
magnetic fields can channel gravitational contraction even for a region with
super-critical N(H2)/2Blos ratio (the ratio between the observed column density
and two times the line-of-sight observed field strength), a parameter which has
been widely used by observers to estimate core mass-to-flux ratios. Although
the mass-to-flux ratio is constant under the flux-freezing condition, we show
that N(H2)/2Blos grows with time if gravitational contraction is anisotropic
due to magnetic fields.
