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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2015
Difficulties faced by various models of interstellar clouds have been discussed. A new evolutionary model which uses energy equation instead of empirical temperature-density relation used in earlier models has been presented. This calculation shows that for a given initial density, the collapsing cloud has a minimum mass which is significantly smaller than the Jean's mass. The clouds with larger mass than the critical mass continue collapsing and physical and chemical evolution remain similar to earlier evolving models. Clouds with mass smaller than the critical mass initially collapse but ultimately bounce back, producing physically similar clouds in collapsing and expanding phases. The chemical evolution in these two physically similar clouds is different mainly due to differences in their lifetime. The lifetime of this oscillating cloud is also longer than the collapsing cloud.