Stellar Mass Loss-driven Wind Models of Elliptical Galaxies?

Recent claims in the literature (Bressan, Chiosi & Fagotto 1994) that the epoch describing the onset of galactic winds in spheroidal star systems has been severely overestimated in the past, due to the neglect of energy deposited in the interstellar medium from stellar winds, is evaluated in the light of a more conservative approach to mod-eling the input of thermal energy to the system from massive stars undergoing mass loss. Applying the most recent models of stellar kinetic energy deposition, coupled with reasonable assumptions regarding the eeciency of thermalisation, it is shown that contrary to the aforementioned study, the innuence of stellar winds in driving the galactic winds in ellipticals of M G > 10 9 M is most likely negligible.