Ithaca College

Please join us for a talk entitled: Understanding Galaxies in 10^23 Easy Steps, with David Kornreich, Ithaca College Physics

Studying how galaxies change with time and interact with each other is made difficult by the fact that the times over which they change and interact are in the billions of years. The NSF is reluctant to fund experiments that have no hope of results for so long, so what is one to do? One solution is to use our knowledge of gravitational and hydrodynamic forces to predict what will happen when galaxies collide, or to test hypotheses of initial conditions and "postdict" the current observed universe. But these models come with their own difficulties--- how does one model the gravitational influences of over ten billion components on each other, and that's counting only the stars? Such a simulation itself might take billions of years. How do we speed up that process without sacrificing accuracy?

Tuesday, May 1st at 12:10 pm in CNS 204
Pizza and Refreshments will be available for $1. Please bring your own cup. Remember to Recycle, Reuse, Reduce.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact the department assistant at jackerman@ithaca.edu. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.