  In this study, we investigate the shapes of starless and protostellar cores
using hydrodynamic, self-gravitating adaptive mesh refinement simulations of
turbulent molecular clouds. We simulate observations of these cores in dust
emission, including realistic noise and telescope resolution, and compare to
the observed core shapes measured in Orion by Nutter & Ward-Thompson (2007).
The simulations and the observations have generally high statistical
similarity, with particularly good agreement between simulations and Orion B.
Although protostellar cores tend to have semi-major axis to semi-minor axis
ratios closer to one, the distribution of axis ratios for starless and
protostellar cores are not significantly different for either the actual
observations of Orion or the simulated observations. Because of the high level
of agreement between the non-magnetic hydrodynamic simulations and observation,
contrary to a number of previous authors, one cannot infer the presence of
magnetic fields from core shape distributions.
