0. Introduction. Let Mn be a n-dimensional minimally immersed submanifold of M, Q> 1. Throughout this paper M is taken to be one of the simply connected space forms with curvature 1, 0, or-1, ie Mfn+ f sn+ f, Rn+ f, or Hn+ f. Given a point p EM, let rp (x) be the dis-tance function on M, we denote the restriction of rp to M as the extrinsic distance function on M. For any a> 0, we define the extrinsic ball cen-tered at p with radius a by