Related papers: The Evolution of Galaxies: A Metaphysics Viewpoint
We write in response to the call from the 2020 Decadal Survey to submit white papers illustrating the most pressing scientific questions in astrophysics for the coming decade. We propose exploration as the central question for the Decadal…
From an anthropological point of view, the whole concept of a "path of progress" in astronomical discovery is anathema, since it implicitly downgrades other cultural perspectives, such as the many "indigenous cosmologies" that still exist…
Evolution is one of the major omnipresent powers in the universe that has been studied for about two centuries. Recent scientific and technical developments make it possible to make the transition from passively understanding to actively…
These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle physicists interested in the recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology. I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe, with…
I review in these lectures our present understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe, making emphasis on the most recent observations of the acceleration of the universe, the precise measurements of the microwave background…
We present a review of recent studies of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, in particular based on large samples of non-kinematically selected stars with available proper motions. The Milky Way is argued to be a reasonable…
The search for life on planets outside our solar system has largely been the province of the astrophysics community until recently. A major development since the NASA Astrobiology Strategy 2015 document (AS15) has been the integration of…
I review the general progress made in the study of galaxy evolution concentrating on the impact of systematic ground-based spectroscopic surveys of faint galaxies and high resolution imaging with Hubble Space Telescope. The picture emerging…
This is the product of a Gaia GREAT workshop on "Gaia and the end states of stellar evolution" held at the University of Leicester in April 2011.
We discuss the region of transition between galactic and extragalactic cosmic rays. The exact shapes and compositions of these two components contains information about important parameters of powerful astrophysical sources and the…
The accelerated expansion of the universe is the most debatable cosmological scenario in the last two decades. Looking for the proper explanation of this scenario, researchers have presented a lot of proposals to discuss it. However,…
This Resource Letter treats the nascent discipline of physical eschatology, which deals with the future evolution of astrophysical objects, including the universe itself, and is thus both a counterpart and a complement to conventional…
Being one of the most fascinating and ancient sciences, astronomy has always played a special role in society. In 2022 ESO organised an online conference to offer the community a platform to discuss astronomical topics of sociological and…
These lectures will cover methods for studying the evolution of galaxies since their formation. Because the properties of a galaxy depend on its history, an understanding of galaxy evolution requires that we understand the dynamical…
I was asked at the end of this conference to provide a few comments on the present status of the field of cosmic abundances, which I summarize (and extend upon) in this contribution. A discussion of the present ``state of play'' is given,…
ATLAS (Astrophysics Telescope for Large Area Spectroscopy) is a concept for a NASA probe-class space mission. It is the spectroscopic follow-up mission to WFIRST, boosting its scientific return by obtaining deep NIR & MIR slit spectroscopy…
We describe a new, free and open source semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, Galacticus. The Galacticus model was designed to be highly modular to facilitate expansion and the exploration of alternative descriptions of key physical…
The motivations and the status of the K20 survey are presented. The first results on the evolution of massive galaxies and the comparison with the predictions of the currently competing scenarios of galaxy formation are also discussed.
The study of colliding galaxies has progressed rapidly in the last few years, driven by observations with powerful new ground and space-based instruments. These instruments have used for detailed studies of specific nearby systems,…
As the Stars and Stellar Evolution (SSE) panel is fully aware, the next decade will see major advances in our understanding of these areas of research. To quote from their charge, these advances will occur in studies of the Sun as a star,…