Observations of the interstellar medium are key to deciphering the physical processes regulating star formation in galaxies. However, observational uncertainties and detection limits can bias the interpretation unless carefully modeled. Here I re-analyze star formation rates and gas masses of a representative sample of nearby galaxies with the help of multi-dimensional Bayesian modeling. Typical star forming galaxies are found to lie in a ‘star forming plane’ largely independent of their stellar mass. Their star formation activity is tightly correlated with the molecular and total gas content, while variations of the molecular-gas-to-star conversion efficiency are shown to be significantly smaller than previously reported. These data-driven findings suggest that physical processes that modify the overall galactic gas content, such as gas accretion and outflows, regulate the star formation activity in typical nearby galaxies, while a change in efficiency triggered by, e.g., galaxy mergers or gas instabilities, may boost the activity of starbursts.

对星际介质的观测是解密调节星系恒星形成的物理过程的关键。但是，除非经过仔细建模，否则观测不确定性和检测极限可能会使解释产生偏差。在这里，我借助多维贝叶斯模型重新分析附近星系代表性样本的恒星形成率和气体质量。发现典型的恒星星系位于“恒星形成平面”中，而很大程度上与恒星质量无关。它们的恒星形成活性与分子和总气体含量紧密相关，而分子气体到恒星转化效率的变化却显着小于以前报道的值。这些以数据为依据的发现表明，物理过程会改变银河气体的整体含量，