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Cosmology

Clues to galaxy formation

Nature volume 400, pages 220–221 (1999)Cite this article

An Erratum to this article was published on 05 August 1999

In 1977, Stephen Weinberg observed that “the theory of the formation of galaxies is one of the great outstanding problems of astrophysics, a problem that today seems far from solution”1. Although the past two decades have seen considerable progress, many questions remain. Broadly speaking, the quest for answers has followed two paths: near-field cosmology (looking for clues close to home) and far-field cosmology (looking back in time (redshift) for the progenitors of modern-day galaxies). In their latest joint venture, Leo Blitz, David Spergel and their colleagues2 propose that an important clue may have been in plain view — that is, in the near field — for almost 40 years.

We know through direct observation that the Universe was vastly hotter and denser in the distant past than it is today. As the Universe expanded it cooled to a point where atomic hydrogen distilled out of the primordial plasma. A vast literature of theoretical work, aided by supercomputer simulations, has concentrated on what happened next. Here we must acknowledge the primary role of dark matter in driving galaxy formation, as it accounts for more than 90% of the mass in the Universe. Although the nature of dark matter is a complete mystery, the consequences for galaxy formation are radically different depending on whether dark matter is ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ (or a mixture of both). We now know that dark matter must be mostly cold in order to produce the small-scale structure we see today in three-dimensional galaxy distributions3.

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Figure 1: How the Universe might appear today, from a state-of-the-art N -body simulation by the Virgo Consortium12.

MAX-PLANCK RECHEN ZENTRUM/EDINBURGH PARALLEL COMPUTING CENTRE

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  1. Anglo-Australian Observatory, PO Box 296, Epping, 2121, New South Wales, Australia

    J. Bland-Hawthorn

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Bland-Hawthorn, J. Clues to galaxy formation. Nature 400, 220–221 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/22230

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