Astronomy - Colloquia

Andrew Benson, Caltech

"Galaxy Formation Theory: The Next Decade"

Thursday, February 2, 2012 - 3:45pm

Lederle Tower room 1033

Refreshments at 3:45 in 1033 Lounge Area
Talk at 4:00 in 1033 Lecture Area

I will present my view of how the field of galaxy formation theory should, and must, progress over the next decade to keep pace with expected observational advances. I will describe my current work aimed at establishing robust modelling techniques that can generate detailed realizations of astronomical datasets, and will discuss the challenges that must be met to reach the primary goal of my research program: inferring the underlying physical mechanisms of galaxy formation from observational measures.