Tri-State Astronomy

I spent the research part of my day at the Tri-State Astronomy meeting, beautifully organized by Geha (Yale) and Maller (CUNY) and others. I won't do it justice; there were five great review talks and lots of great posters (and one-minute poster summaries). Alyson Brooks (Rutgers), in her review talk, beautifully summarized the issues with CDM at small scales, and discussed the idea that baryonic processes might explain all of these. My take on her bottom line (that baryons might explain everything) is that it would be a disappointment if we can't see the predicted properties of the dark matter at small scales! But she did point towards isolated dwarf galaxies (that is, very low luminosity galaxies that are not satellites of any more luminous galaxy) as critical tests of the ideas; isolated dwarfs should differ from satellite dwarfs if CDM is going to stay okay at small scales. She also implicitly made many predictions about outflows from small galaxies at intermediate redshifts. And she gave a few shout-outs to Zolotov, who has been deeply involved in these baryon issues since leaving NYU.