How Do Galaxies Form?
Astrophysics
2008-10-21 v1
Abstract
It is currently believed that galaxies were assembled via chaotic hierarchical mergers between massive cold dark matter halos, in which baryonic star forming matter was embedded. One would therefore expect the properties of individual galaxies to be determined by numerous independent factors such as star forming history, merger history, mass, angular momentum, size and environment. It is therefore surprising to find that galaxies actually appear to form an (almost) one parameter family in which galaxy mass is the dominant factor.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0810.3644,
title = {How Do Galaxies Form?},
author = {Sidney van den Bergh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.3644},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
An edited version of this article will appear in Nature (News and Views)