conclusions

Mondays are my worst days, but I did get time to closely read the conclusion to Masjedi's most important thesis chapter and the concluding chapter to the thesis as a whole. He has shown that the growth of luminous red galaxies by merging is very slow at the present day (less than 2 percent, on average, of growth per Gyr), and dominated by dry mergers with galaxies more luminous than L-star. This is not inconsistent with either theoretical or observational bounds on the merger rate, but it is definitely lower than most other estimates. Masjedi's measurements are unique in that they are very firm upper limits; he has basically made the maximal reasonable assumptions about the mergers; any more conservative or realistic assumptions would lower his inferred rate.