Related papers: Securing Fuel for Our Frigid Cosmic Future
The last 20 years have seen an explosion in our understanding of the large-scale distribution and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe. The field has moved from a largely qualitative, morphological description of the structures seen…
If our universe was born as a baby universe on the other side of the event horizon of a black hole existing in a parent universe, then the corresponding white hole at rest provides the absolute frame of reference in the universe. In this…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
The properties of galaxies depend on their environment: red, passive elliptical galaxies are usually located in denser environments than blue, star-forming spiral galaxies. This difference in galaxy populations can be detected at all scales…
According to the hierarchical model, small galaxies form first and merge together to form bigger objects. In parallel, galaxies assemble their mass through accretion from cosmic filaments. Recently, the increased spatial resolution of the…
It is generally recognized that massive galaxies form through a combination of in-situ collapse and ex-situ accretion. The in-situ component forms early, where gas collapse and compaction leads to the formation of massive compact systems…
Spiral galaxies have most of their stellar mass in a large rotating disk, and only a modest fraction in a central spheroidal bulge. This poses a major challenge for cosmological models of galaxy formation. Galaxies form at the centre of…
Globular clusters are compact, gravitationally bound systems of up to a million stars. The GCs in the Milky Way contain some of the oldest stars known, and provide important clues to the early formation and continuing evolution of our…
Rapid progress is now being made in the study of stellar populations of galaxies at large lookback times, both in dense clusters and the field. Dramatic transformations in star formation histories (even morphologies) appear to prevail among…
Given a sufficiently large universe, numerous civilizations almost surely exist. Some of these civilizations will be short-lived and die out relatively early in their development, i.e., before having the chance to spread to other planets.…
Earth's future detectability depends upon the trajectory of our civilization over the coming centuries. Human civilization is also the only known example of an energy-intensive civilization, so our history and future trajectories provide…
Star formation is spatially clustered across a range of environments, from dense stellar clusters to unbound associations. As a result, radiative or dynamical interactions with neighbouring stars disrupt (proto)planetary systems and limit…
Energy has always been the driving force in the technological and economic development of societies. The consumption of a significant amount of energy is required to provide basic living conditions of developed countries (heating,…
This review focuses on how galaxies and their globular cluster systems form. I first discuss the now fairly convincing evidence that some globular clusters form in galaxy starbursts/mergers. One way these observations are valuable is they…
The transformations taking place in late-type galaxies in the environment of rich clusters of galaxies at z=0 are reviewed. From the handful of late-type galaxies that inhabit local clusters, whether they were formed in-situ and survived as…
We examine the environment of star-forming galaxies selected in the 2dFGRS. We find that bright star-forming galaxies display a significant deficit of faint neighbours relative to passive galaxies. If a deficit in fainter companions implies…
Star clusters and their stellar populations play a significant role in the context of galaxy evolution, across space (from local to high redshift) and time (from currently forming to fossil remnants). We are now within reach of answering a…
High-mass stars are major players in the chemical and dynamical evolution of galaxies. Open clusters and associations represent the natural laboratories to study their evolution. In this review, I will present a personal selection of…
Virtually all massive galaxies, including our own, host central black holes ranging in mass from millions to billions of solar masses. The growth of these black holes releases vast amounts of energy that powers quasars and other weaker…
The chemical abundances in the atmosphere of a star provide unique information about the gas from which that star formed, and, modulo processes that are not important for the vast majority of stars, such as mass transfer in close binary…