A molecular gas phase in the Cold Neutral Medium ?

I examine the possibility that the Cold Neutral Medium of the interstellar medium in galaxies contains a molecular gas phase that may represent a significant and even the dominant amount of its mass in metal-poor regions. In spiral galaxies such regions are found at large galactocentric distances where diffuse H2 gas will be untraceable through its feeble 12CO J=1–0 emission, the very lack of it being also responsible its higher kinetic temperatures (Tk ∼ 60 − 100 K). Sensitive sub-mm imaging of spiral galaxies has demonstrated the existence of dust well inside their HI gas distribution while recent observational work suggests a high H2 formation rate from HI association onto grains. The latter is indeed a critical unknown and a high value can easily compensate for the reduction of the available grain surface in the metal-poor environments giving rise to a CO-poor, diffuse H2 phase that may then contribute significantly to the mass and pressure of the interstellar medium in such environments.