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Dust grains and fiducial modeling
Hi again, Robert. Your post on dust grains raised a question and a thought.
The question: Re 'According to one popular model, the grains become progressively more numerous with progressively decreasing grain radius,' I wonder if that would be a power-law relationship vis-a-vis linear or log. Power law relationships describe some pretty fundamental properties, e.g. initial mass function, luminosity function, etc. Thoughts?
Another question: Re your comment, 'astronomers who talk about the composition and size-distribution of the Interstellar Dust very prudently talk about models rather than actual confirmed facts.' I read so many papers based on modeling that I wonder where the boundary between 'prudent' and 'over-reaching' lies. I notice that reliance on models rather than data crunching seems to be a feature of younger teams (or at least lead authors representing their consensus), who have come into the field more familiar with data mining and algorithms than observational assessment. This is only my hunch, based on the names I do NOT see on many of the model-heavy papers—van den Bergh, Tolstoy, Elmgreen, your own Ken Freeman, Dan Bates, Krumholz. I really begin to wonder when I see authors citing mainly their own earlier papers.
Where do you draw the credibility line between solid and stretching as you wade through papers?
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