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UID:UW-Physics-Event-1585
DTSTART:20090915T203000Z
DURATION:PT1H0M0S
DTSTAMP:20260506T172130Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20090831T191109Z
LOCATION:3425 Sterling Hall
SUMMARY:"Using Numerical Simulations to Study the Formation and Evolut
 ion of Galaxies\, Astronomy Colloquium\, Dr. T.J. Cox\, Harvard Smiths
 onian Center for Astrophysics
DESCRIPTION:The past decade has produced an amazingly robust picture f
 or the universe we live in.  This picture predicts that structure form
 s hierarchically\, i.e.\, small objects collapse at early times and gr
 ow via mergers and gravity. The prevailing idea for the formation of g
 alaxies is that the morphology and structure that we observe is a dire
 ct byproduct of this hierarchical merger history\; however\, a detaile
 d mapping between specific merger histories\, and the wide variety of 
 galaxy types\, is still uncertain. By using a comprehensive set of sta
 te-of-the-art numerical simulations\, we show how this process is bein
 g studied\, and what some of the common scenarios might be. For exampl
 e\, we show that a single disk-disk merger\, such as that which will o
 ccur in 5 Gyr between our own Milky Way and our nearest neighbor Andro
 meda\, is a plausible mechanism to form many elliptical galaxies provi
 ded that dissipation is involved. We also show were this picture fails
 \, and outline how current and future work will address these shortcom
 ings and yield testable predictions of the model. 
URL:https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/?id=1585
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