Speaker: James Wadsley (McMaster University)
Galaxy Formation: Successes, Challenges and Simulations
Galaxy formation has periodically experienced crises that were often framed as challenges for the cosmological model. In practice, these discrepancies were often a product of limitations in simulations that were typically overcome incrementally without much fanfare. Strong limitations still exist, related to the difficulty in resolving key scales (e.g. cloud-scale structure in galaxies, turbulence) and accurately modelling physics (e.g. star formation, feedback, radiation and SMBH). In this talk I will give a behind the scenes take on how simulation groups view these limitations, how to interpret claims made by simulators, some recent results and how we might make progress in future.
