Related papers: Securing Fuel for Our Frigid Cosmic Future
A Big Bang universe consisting, before recombination, of H, D, 3He, 4He, 6Li, and 7Li ions, electrons, photons, and massless neutrinos, at closure density, with a galaxy-size perturbation spectrum but no large-scale structure, will evolve…
It is now a well established fact that galaxies undergo significant morphological transformation during their lifetimes, manifesting as an evolution along the Hubble sequence from the late to the early Hubble types. The physical processes…
The stellar populations of the stellar halo and of the thick disk of the Milky Way reveal much about the merging history that our Galaxy, a typical large disk galaxy, has experienced. Our current understanding, described here, implies a…
Dynamical evolution of spiral galaxies is strongly dependent on non-axisymmetric patterns that develop from gravitational instabilities, either spontaneously or externally triggered. Some evolutionary sequences are described through which a…
The measurement of chemical abundances in planetary nebulae in nearby galaxies is now relatively straightforward. The challenge is to use these chemical abundances to infer the chemical evolution of their host galaxies. At this point, our…
Star clusters that form in nuclear rings appear to be at slightly larger radii than the gas. We argue that the star clusters move out from the gas in which they are formed because of satellite-disk tidal interactions. In calculating the…
Most stars form in compact, dense embedded clusters with memberships ranging from a dozen stars to many millions of stars. Embedded clusters containing more than a few hundred stars also contain O stars that disrupt the nebula abruptly.…
Galactic nuclei should contain a cluster of stars and compact objects in the vicinity of the central supermassive black hole due to stellar evolution, minor mergers and gravitational dynamical friction. By analogy with protoplanetary…
Most gravitational lens galaxies are early-type galaxies in relatively low density environments. We show that they lie on the same fundamental plane as early-type galaxies in both local and distant rich clusters. Their surface brightness…
As gas giant planets evolve, they may scatter other planets far from their original orbits to produce hot Jupiters or rogue planets that are not gravitationally bound to any star. Here, we consider planets cast out to large orbital…
The dynamics of galaxies in an expanding universe is often determined for gravitational and dark matter in an Einstein-de Sitter universe, or alternatively by modifying the gravitational long-range attractions in the Newtonian dynamics…
As we discover numerous habitable planets around other stars in the Milky Way galaxy, including the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, one cannot help but wonder why have we not detected evidence for an advanced alien civilization as of yet.…
The long-term evolution of stellar orbits bound to a massive centre is studied in order to understand the cores of star clusters in central regions of galaxies. Stellar trajectories undergo tiny perturbation, the origin of which is twofold:…
[Abridged] Over the past two decades observations and theoretical simulations have established a global frame-work of galaxy formation and evolution in the young Universe. Galaxies formed as baryonic gas cooled at the centres of collapsing…
We investigate the impact of recent observational advances in research on the gaseous content of the universe on our knowledge of star formation histories of disk galaxies. Several contemporary surveys indicate that large quantities of gas…
Theoretical considerations and observational data support the idea that mergers were more frequent in the past. At high redshifts, violent interactions and mergers may be implicated in the origin of Lyman-break galaxies, sub-mm starbursts,…
We study the evolution of star clusters located in the outer regions of a galaxy undergoing a sudden mass loss through gas expulsion in the framework of Milgromian dynamics (MOND) by means of N-body simulations. We find that, to leave a…
We show that scalar field fluctuations alone can drive cosmic acceleration, provided the universe is spatially closed and the Compton wavelength of the field exceeds the radius of curvature. This mechanism may open new perspectives on…
Current cosmological data indicate that our universe contains a substantial component of dark vacuum energy that is driving the cosmos to accelerate. We examine the immediate and longer term consequences of this dark energy (assumed here to…
Star clusters form in dense, hierarchically collapsing gas clouds. Bulk kinetic energy is transformed to turbulence with stars forming from cores fed by filaments. In the most compact regions, stellar feedback is least effective in removing…