2001/03/23 by James Binney, Binney, James
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0103398
6 pages to appear in Particles and Fields in Radio Galaxies, eds R.A. Laing and K.M. Blundell, ASP Conf Ser
arxiv created 2001/03/23 · openalex publication_date 2001/03/23 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
For two decades the steady-state cooling-flow model has dominated the literature of cluster and elliptical-galaxy X-ray sources. For ten years this model has been in severe difficulty from a theoretical point of view, and it is now coming under increasing pressure observationally. For two decades the steady-state cooling-flow model has dominated the literature of cluster and elliptical-galaxy X-ray sources. For ten years this model has been in severe difficulty from a theoretical point of view, and it is now coming under increasing pressure observationally. A small number of enthusiasts have argued for a radically different interpretation of the data, but had little impact on prevailing opinion because the unsteady heating picture that they advocate is extremely hard to work out in detail. Here I explain why it is difficult to extract robust observational predictions from the heating picture. Major problems include the variability of the sources, the different ways in which a bi-polar flow can impact on X-ray emission, the weakness of synchrotron emission from sub-relativistic flows, and the sensitivity of synchrotron emission to a magnetic field that is probably highly localized.