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Converging flows of atomic hydrogen provide a natural mechanism to form highly structured and turbulent molecular clouds, due to a combination of thermal and dynamical instabilities. Specifically the dynamical instabilities can lead to a focusing of the incoming gas streams, and thus provide a very efficient mechanism to form massive protostellar cores of a few 100 M_sun within 10 Myr, at flow parameters typical for the Galactic disk. I will discuss the relevance of this mechanism for massive star formation, including its predictions of where massive cores would form in molecular clouds, and the consequences for stellar feedback.
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