There was a one-day mini-symposium here (at MPIA, Heidelberg) on star formation in a cosmological context. There were good, long talks all day. A few randomly recalled notes:
Though Grebel (Basel) introduced her work entirely in the context of the substructure problem, I think I agreed more with Springel (MPA Garching) who, under questioning, admitted that the substructure problem may be a sub-problem of the luminosity function problem (the problem that the distribution of galaxy luminosities or stellar masses looks nothing like the CDM-predicted distribution of dark-matter halo masses). Grebel showed that the nearby dwarfs—ie, those close to their host galaxies—are not only older in stellar populations than more distant dwarfs, but also more metal-rich. Springel convinced me that cosmic rays might be an important dynamical component of the ISM and affect star formation in galaxies, particularly low-mass galaxies.
Abel (Stanford) showed amazingly high dynamic range (1014.5) adaptive-mesh simulation results. He argued that the details of ultra-high redshift supernovae were unimportant for initial pollution
of the IGM with metals; the distribution of the metals into the IGM is done by a combination of SNe, winds, and radiation (which makes low-density regions that are easy to expand into). Gallagher (Wisconsin) showed details of star formation in starbursts in the local Universe; he convinced me that Perseus A is the most incredible galaxy in the Universe. I am inspired to find SDSS analogs.
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