2007-03-14

critical tests of CDM, alpha

Spent all day yesterday at Princeton arguing with Peebles about critical tests of CDM; ie, observations of physical phenomena relating to galaxies where even if we marginalize over our uncertainties about galaxy formation a conflict between the observations and the theory could potentially rule out or non-trivially confirm the CDM model. We focused on three areas: (1) the Milky Way as an anomalous galaxy (in, eg, having an old, thin disk), (2) galaxy–galaxy merger rates, and (3) regularities among early-type galaxies (which are allegedly built from heterogenous mergers). We have had this conversation about every six months for the last eight years; maybe this year we will write a paper?

Spent all day today stress-testing our alpha-ready astrometry.net service, and kept finding that it is not quite alpha-ready.

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