We present first results from an unbiased 50 deg ^ { 2 } submillimeter Galactic survey at 250 , 350 , and 500 µm from the 2006 flight of the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope ( BLAST ) .
The map has resolution ranging from 36″ to 60″ in the three submillimeter bands spanning the thermal emission peak of cold starless cores .
We determine the temperature , luminosity , and mass of more than one thousand compact sources in a range of evolutionary stages and an unbiased statistical characterization of the population .
From comparison with C ^ { 18 } O data , we find the dust opacity per gas mass , \kappa r = 0.16 cm ^ { 2 } g ^ { -1 } at 250 µm , for cold clumps .
We find that 2 % of the mass of the molecular gas over this diverse region is in cores colder than 14 K , and that the mass function for these cold cores is consistent with a power law with index \alpha = -3.22 \pm 0.14 over the mass range 14 \mbox { M } _ { \odot } < M < 80 \mbox { M } _ { \odot } .
Additionally , we infer a mass-dependent cold core lifetime of t _ { c } ( M ) = 4 \times 10 ^ { 6 } ( M / 20 \mbox { M } _ { \odot } ) ^ { -0.9 } years — longer than what has been found in previous surveys of either low or high mass cores , and significantly longer than free fall or likely turbulent decay times .
This implies some form of non-thermal support for cold cores during this early stage of star formation .