Event Description
Tjitske Starkenburg
Northwestern University The formation and evolution of galaxies is related to almost all of astrophysics: galaxies trace the large-scale structure in the universe, but also host all small-scale physical processes involving stars and gas. Galaxies evolve under a complex combination of numerous internal and external physical processes, of which many remain poorly understood. Upcoming telescopes and surveys will provide a deluge of observational data, to unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. At the same time simulations have made progress in the range of physical scales and the amount of detail modeled. Mining the full potential of these large and diverse datasets, however, demands a deeper and data-driven exploration to disentangle evolutionary processes in galaxies and their observational signatures. In this talk I will discuss such challenges in the context of two distinct yet complementary topics: one concerning the star formation rates in galaxies (and why some galaxies stop forming stars), and one focusing on galaxy mass growth histories, galaxy interactions, and the observational signatures these processes give rise to. For both of these topics I will especially highlight opportunities to find novel and unique constraints on the physics driving galaxy formation.
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