Genevieve Graves presents a public talk at UC Berkeley on November 19th, 2011, as part of the Science@Cal Lecture Series described at scienceatcal.berkeley.edu/lectures
Galaxies, like our own Milky Way, are not eternal or changeless. They are born in the early universe out of massive clouds of gas. In their early years, they experience rapid growth, forming lots of new stars out of the matter that streams in to feed them. As teenagers, they collide with other galaxies, setting off massive new bursts of star formation and growing large black holes at their centers. From there, they settle down into a sustainable mode, forming stars reliably (to pay the mortgage!) and only occasionally having a run-in with another galaxy. Finally, in their old age, they retire from the star-formation business and relax, coasting out the rest of time with their dwindling supply of stars. This talk will trace the life-cycle of galaxies, large and small, from the early universe to the present. Come learn about the origins and the ultimate fate of this "island universe" we call the Milky Way!
Dr. Genevieve Graves studies the formation histories of galaxies---how they form stars, collide and merge together to make bigger galaxies, and eventually shut off star formation. Dr. Graves is a Bay Area local, having graduated from Albany High School in 1997. After undergraduate work at Harvard and Cambridge, she returned to California to do a PhD in astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. She is now a Fellow at UC Berkeley's Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science.
Videography and editing by Chris Klein, Andrew Siemion and James Anderson. This video is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License - creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us
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