(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-10-22)
Li, Gongjie; Wise, John H.
Cosmology studies the universe at the largest scales, applying the laws of physics over billions of light years and all the way back to the universe's infancy. In dozens of groundbreaking publications, Jim Peebles laid the foundations for theoretical cosmology, painting a picture of how matter evolves from the moments after the Big Bang into a cosmic web of dark matter and galaxies. His work set the stage for current research that routinely uses supercomputer simulations to study the astrophysics of galaxies.
Closer to home, people have speculated the existence of planets outside of our own solar system for centuries. However, there was no way of knowing whether they exist and how common they are. In 1995, the first discovery of an extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, orbiting a Sun-like star was made by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who detected the signatures of the planet 51 Pegasi b as it pulls its host star. This discovery marked a breakthrough in astrophysics and led to various fields of interests, including the formation and habitability of exoplanets.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-11-18)
Wise, John H.
Our Milky Way is a beautiful spiral galaxy and has been constantly growing since the beginning of time. How did the ancestors of the Milky Way form and look in the first billion years of the universe? Before galaxies form, isolated massive stars ignite from primordial gas composed of only hydrogen and helium. They forever changed the cosmic landscape by heating their surroundings and enriching the universe with the first heavy elements. These events spark the era of galaxy formation, where dwarf galaxies assemble first and then merge together to form larger and larger galaxies. Observations from the Hubble Space Telescope are just now uncovering these baby galaxies, and a wealth of information will come from the James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch in 2018. Supercomputer simulations of galaxy formation are vital to interpret these data and to learn about our cosmic origins. In my talk, I will present the latest results of supercomputer simulations that reveal the sequence of events that lead to the birth of the first galaxies in the universe.