neufer wrote:
- `Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
`I’ve had nothing yet,’ Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can’t take more.’
`You mean you can’t take LESS,’ said the Hatter: `it’s very easy to take MORE than nothing.’
Thanks for that lovely Alice in Wonderland quote, Art! (Or is it Alice Through the Looking Glass?)
Anyway. I am on record here at Starship Asterisk* for saying that there is
no star formation in M104, but I take it back. The reason is that almost any really substantial dust lane in a galaxy will produce
some new stars. Take a look at this
APOD from May 3, 2010, which portrayed galaxy NGC 3190. At first glance, you would be forgiven for thinking that NGC 3190 contains no young stars at all, but at full resolution you can see several little blue dots in the dust lane, which may be small clusters of young stars, or even individual young stars. So there
are young stars in NGC 3190, and there is probably some ongoing star formation too, although none is visible in the APOD in question. For the same reason, we should assume that there really are a few -
a few!! - young stars in M104, and probably
some ongoing star formation.
So let's return to Alice. Had she really had no tea
at all at the time when the March Hare offered her more? But she had gone into the room where the tea party was taking place, and the tea that the others were drinking might have been hot and steaming. Little droplets of tea mixed with the air, and Alice could undoubtedly
smell the tea. If she smelled it, she must have breathed it, and since she breathed it, she must have ingested some minute quantities of it. So had Alice had
no tea? I beg to differ.
Ann