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Physical Society ColloquiumInterview for Faculty PositionA Brief History of Galaxy ClustersCaleb ScharfColumbia UniversityConsisting of dozens to thousands of galaxies in orbit around a common center, together with vast pools of hot plasma and dark matter, clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound systems we know of in the universe. Their size and consequent visibility back through cosmic time makes them not only fantastic laboratories of astrophysics but also extremely powerful probes of cosmological parameters, such as the mass density and equation of state of the Universe. I will describe our current knowledge of these systems, including the most physically detailed investigation of a `local' cluster yet made, and the most physically detailed current investigation of a `proto-cluster', seen a mere 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. What these old and young systems tell us may have profound implications for the way the Universe assembles and processes normal matter.
Thursday, February 12th 2004, 16:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103) |