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D. Burstein (Arizona State University), G. R. Blumenthal (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Most spiral galaxies are found in galaxy groups with low velocity dispersions; most E/S0 galaxies are found in galaxy groups with relatively high velocity dispersions. The mass of the hot gas we can observe in the E/S0 groups via their thermal X-ray emission is, on average, as much as the baryonic mass of the galaxies in these groups, similar what is known for galaxy clusters. Hot gas in S-rich groups, however, is of low enough temperature for its X-ray emission to be heavily extincted by Galactic HI, and hence is hard to detect. We postulate that such lower temperature hot gas does exist in S-rich groups, and explore the consequences of this assumption. We find that for a wide range of metallicity and density, hot gas in S-rich groups can cool in far less than a Hubble time. If such gas exists, and if it can cool when interacting with HI from existing galaxies, then it can help to explain many disparate observations, both Galactic and extragalactic, that are otherwise hard to understand.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: burstein@samuri.la.asu.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.