Related papers: Securing Fuel for Our Frigid Cosmic Future
The redistribution of stars in galactic disks is an important aspect of disk galaxy evolution. Stars that efficiently migrate in such a way that does not also appreciably heat their orbits can drastically affect the stellar populations…
Studies of the molecular interstellar medium that fuels star formation and supermassive black hole growth in galaxies at cosmological distances have undergone tremendous progress over the past few years. Based on the detection of molecular…
We explore the gravitational influence of pressure supported stellar systems on the internal density distribution of a gaseous environment. We conclude that compact massive star clusters with masses >= 10^6 M_sun act as cloud condensation…
Galaxies accrete their mass by means of both smooth accretion from the cosmic web, and the mergers of smaller entities. We wish to quantify the respective role of these two modes of accretion, which could determine the morphological types…
Cosmic voids, the largest under-dense structures in the Universe, are crucial for exploring galaxy evolution. These vast, sparsely populated regions are home to void galaxies -- predominantly gas-rich, star-forming, and blue -- that evolve…
We present an overview of some of the issues surrounding current models of galaxy formation, highlighting recent insights obtained from cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. Detailed examination of gas accretion processes show a hot mode…
Collisions and mergers of gas-rich galaxies trigger bursts of star and cluster formation. Of the thousands of clusters typically formed during a major merger, only the most massive and compact survive for Gigayears as globular clusters…
It has recently been suggested that galaxies in the early Universe can grow through the accretion of cold gas, and that this may have been the main driver of star formation and stellar mass growth. Because the cold gas is essentially…
Stellar Populations are the fossil record of Galactic evolution. Interpretation of this record in the Local Group allows one to determine reliably the dominant physics controlling the evolution of those galaxies which are typical of the…
It is now generally believed that galaxies were built up through gravitational amplification of primordial fluctuations and the subsequent merging of smaller precursor structures. The stars of the structures that assembled to form the Milky…
We consider the hypothesis that the formation of elliptical galaxies includes a phase in which star formation is mostly restricted to massive stars, with the bias towards high mass stars increasing with elliptical galaxy mass. The mass…
Cosmological simulations predict that during the evolution of galaxies, the specific star formation rate continuously decreases. In a previous study we showed that generally this is not caused by the galaxies running out of cold gas but…
Extremely rich populations of globular clusters, numbering ten thousand or more, surround the central giant galaxies in rich clusters. I discuss some recent spectroscopic and photometric observations of these rich globular clusters…
Galactic winds are the primary mechanism by which energy and metals are recycled in galaxies and are deposited into the intergalactic medium. New observations are revealing the ubiquity of this process, particularly at high redshift. We…
Present-day galaxy clusters are the largest virialized structures in the Universe, yet their early assembly remains poorly understood. At z$>$2, clusters in formation span tens of Mpc and host gas-rich, dust-obscured galaxies embedded in…
Recent observations by the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that a strong dynamical and morphological evolution of disk galaxies has occurred in clusters of galaxies. I present the result of the self-consistent high-resolution simulations of…
We present a pedagogical review on the formation and evolution of galaxies in groups, utilizing observational information from the Local Group to galaxies at z~6. The majority of galaxies in the nearby universe are found in groups, and…
The ease of interstellar rocket travel is an issue with implications for the long term fate of our own and other civilizations and for the much-debated number of technological civilizations in the Galaxy. We show that the physical barrier…
The central regions of galaxies show the presence of massive black holes and/or dense stellar systems. The question about their modes of formation is still under debate. A likely explanation of the formation of the central dense stellar…
We review the observational evidences and the possible theoretical explanations for the abundance gradients in the Galactic disk. In particular, we discuss the implications of abundance gradients and gradients of abundance ratios on the…