I am a graduate student in mathematics, and yesterday I posted a research question on mathoverflow. I was shocked to find a surprisingly amazing response. I was even more shocked to see Terrence Tao answer my question. I now have a few questions about what could happen moving forwards.
It seems to me, in my extreme inexperience, that what was brought up in the discussions for my question could make a nice little paper. I have not written a paper before and do not know how the process works, nor if this is appropriate at this level. I will definitely speak to my supervisor when I meet him, but we work in a completely different field, so the advice would be more general about paper-writing.
And of course, the other issue is that since the answer is written by Tao, and if I wish to write a paper about this, I'm assuming I will need to discuss possible collaboration with him, since a key part of the result is due to him. Or at least, talk about referencing his answer, and getting his opinions if necessary on what I plan to build on his results. But Tao is an extremely busy man, and one cannot simply contact him about a possible collaboration. I feel that would be in bad taste given his stature and my humble position.
I'm hesitant about my options. What would you recommend I start with? Are there other more important points I should be thinking about instead, or am I confused about how all this works?
EDIT I bit the bullet and emailed him. I got an immediate response, so my worries were for nothing. Thanks for the advice!