Related papers: Cosmic Structure Formation
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…
Cosmic surveys of large scale structure have imaged hundreds of millions of galaxies and mapped the 3D positions of over a million. Surveys starting over the next few years will increase these numbers more than tenfold. Simultaneously,…
A review of the present observational and theoretical status of elliptical galaxies is presented with the aim to clarify whether the monolithic or the hierarchical, is a more viable scenario for the origin of these structures. We describe…
The empirical laws of star formation suggest that galactic-scale gravity is involved, but they do not identify the actual triggering mechanisms for clusters in the final stages. Many other triggering processes satisfy the empirical laws…
Gravitational-collapse-based explanations of the cosmic web lead to problems in estimating the total mass in the universe. A first-principles several-scales model is developed here for the structural organisation of cosmic matter in a flat…
On the basis of a recent cosmological model, the puzzle of galactic rotational velocities at their edges is explained without invoking dark matter. A rationale for the existence of structures like galaxies and superclusters is also…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
Cosmic structure simulations have improved enormously over the past decade, both in terms of the resolution which can be achieved, and with the addition of hydrodynamic and other techniques to formerly purely gravitational methods. This is…
Evidence for cosmic down-sizing has been growing over the last decade. It is now clear that the major star-forming epoch for the largest galaxies occurred earlier than for smaller galaxies. This not only runs counter to the popular…
The formation and evolution of galaxies cannot be separated from large scale structure growth. Dark matter halos (and, therefore, galaxies) form and grow within the cosmic web - the classification of large-scale structure as distinct…
The observational evidence for the existence of a non-zero cosmological constant is getting stronger. It is therefore timely to address the question of its eventual effect on the dynamics of galaxies, clusters and larger structures in the…
We review a cosmology in which particles are fluctuationally created from a background Zero Point Field. This cosmology is consistent with recent observations of an ever expanding and accelerating universe, as also the recently confirmed…
We explore the motivation behind large stellar surveys in Galactic astronomy, in particular, surveys that measure the photometric, phase space and abundance properties of thousands or millions of stars. These observations are essential to…
Galaxy morphology is a product of how galaxies formed, how they interacted with their environment, how they were influenced by internal perturbations, AGN, and dark matter, and of their varied star formation histories. This article reviews…
An approximate statistical description of the formation and evolution of structure of the universe based on the Zel'dovich theory of gravitational instability is proposed. It is found that the evolution of DM structure shows features of…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
We challenge a widely accepted assumption of observational cosmology: that successful reconstruction of observed galaxy density fields from measured galaxy velocity fields (or vice versa), using the methods of gravitational instability…
Universe structure emerges in the unreduced, complex-dynamical interaction process with the simplest initial configuration (two attracting homogeneous fields). The unreduced interaction analysis avoiding any perturbative model gives…
Studies of galaxy clusters have proved crucial in helping to establish the standard model of cosmology, with a universe dominated by dark matter and dark energy. A theoretical basis that describes clusters as massive, multi-component,…