Is Dark Matter in Spiral Galaxies Cold Gas? I. Observational Constraints and Dynamical Clues About Galaxy Evolution

Based on dynamical constraints about the Hubble sequence evolution, observational data and a number of "conspiracies", we propose that the dark matter around spiral galaxies is in the form of cold gas, essentially in molecular form and rotationally supported. (full A&A paper (in press) available by anonymous ftp at obssd8.unige.ch in /pub/fractal as postscript file: dm_paper_I.ps (170k), or papers I & II + figures as a compressed tar file dm_papers.Z.tar (2.1 Mb)).