Discussion: Abstract

Congratulations on your colloqium going smoothly (and finding time to do abs!). As for the abstract, I could understand it! I won't need to ever calculate star formation rates, but will understand why it's important to take old stars into account.

Thanks for making astrophysics look easy. :-)

Do you have to have a bunch of old stars around to have produced the carbon which is necessary for the PAH dust to be present? Or do young stars already manage to eject plenty of heavier elements out into space without having to undergo some sort of nova action to disperse the stuff?

My field also has a PAH, but the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis is way less cool.

Thanks Janet!

As for ejecting enough carbon to make the PAHs in the first place, that can be done pretty quickly, within a few Myr of the first generation of stars. Stars are born with a variety of masses and the most massive die very quickly, starting at 3-5 Myr. These are actually also the stars that supernova, so they disperse their guts to the interstellar medium (including Carbon) also on that <10 Myr timescale. So in the very, very early universe, you're right, we wouldn't have the carbon available for making the PAHs.

However, timescale on PAH formation itself is totally unknown. Even the process isn't too well ID'ed...

Hah, nice other PAH =)

Dead stars, still burn. I love this tune!!

Dead still,
stars burn.

Just remeber also excercise to avoid PAH.

Hah, just listened to the song, nice. And yeah, while the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis also sounds dangerous, probably better to keep lungs happy... =)