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Physics Colloquium : "How the Galactic disk reshapes itself" | The Racah Institute of Physics

Physics Colloquium : "How the Galactic disk reshapes itself"

Date: 
Mon, 30/11/202012:00-13:30
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Lecturer: Hans-Walter Rix (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg)

Abstract:



By the standards of massive galaxies, the Milky Way has lived a sheltered life, unbattered by mergers with other large galaxies.
Most of its stars indeed live in a thin, dynamically fragile disk. But does that imply that not much dynamical evolution has happened?
Far from it: with new data, we can now show unequivocally that the orbits in the Galactic disk have extensively rearranged themselves over the lifetime of the disk. I’ll show how we know that, what dynamical mechanisms are at play, and why this may explain the remarkable regularity of the disk galaxy population.