  The Mopra 22m and SEST 15m telescopes have been used to detect and partially
map a region of 12CO(1-0) line emission within the Magellanic Bridge, a region
lying between the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The emission appears to be
embedded in a cloud of neutral hydrogen, and is in the vicinity of an IRAS
source. The CO emission region is found to have a 60um/100um flux density ratio
typical for 12CO(1-0) detections within the SMC, although it has a
significantly lower 12CO brightness and velocity width. These suggest that the
observed region is of a low metallicity, supporting earlier findings that the
Magellanic Bridge is not as evolved as the SMC and Magellanic Stream, which are
themselves of a lower metallicity than the Galaxy. Our observations, along with
empirical models based on SMC observations, indicate that the radius of the
detected CO region has an upper limit of ~16 pc. This detection is, to our
knowledge, the first detection of CO emission from the Magellanic Bridge and is
the only direct evidence of star formation through molecular cloud collapse in
this region.
