SOMBRERO GALAXY is an all-in-one package: it exemplifies nearly every

galactic phenomenon that astronomers have struggled for a century to

explain. It has a bright ellipsoidal bulge of stars, a supermassive black hole
buried deep within that bulge, a disk with spiral arms [seen close to edge-
on], and star clusters scattered about the outskirts. Stretching beyond this
image is thought to be a vast halo of inherently invisible dark matter.

By Guinevere Kauffmann and Frank van den Bosch

The Life Cycle COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

 Astronomers are on the verge of explaining the enigmatic variety of galaxies

of Galaxies COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

In many science-fiction stories,
a mighty empire dooms itself through its hubris: it presumes a decade ago, when astronomy entered a new golden age.
to conquer and rule an entire galaxy. That seems a lofty ambi- Spectacular advances in telescope and detector technology
tion indeed. To bring our Milky Way galaxy to heel, an empire are now giving astronomers a view of how galaxies have
would have to vanquish 100 billion stars. But cosmologists— changed over cosmic timescales. The Hubble Space Telescope
those astronomers who study the universe as a whole— are has taken very deep snapshots of the sky, revealing galaxies
unimpressed. The Milky Way is one of 50 billion or more down to unprecedentedly faint levels. Ground-based instru-
galaxies within the observable reaches of space. To conquer it ments such as the giant Keck telescopes have amassed statistics
would be to conquer an insignificant speck. on distant (and therefore ancient) galaxies. It is as if evolution-
A century ago nobody knew all those galaxies even existed. ary biologists had been handed a time machine, allowing them
Most astronomers thought that the galaxy and the universe to travel back into prehistory and take pictures of the animals
were synonymous. Space contained perhaps a billion stars, in- and plants inhabiting the earth at a series of different epochs.
terspersed with fuzzy splotches that looked like stars in the pro- The challenge for astronomers, as it would be for the biologists,
cess of forming or dying. Then, in the early decades of the 20th is to grasp how the species observed at the earliest times evolved
century, came the golden age of astronomy, when American as- into what we know today.
tronomer Edwin Hubble and others determined that those The task is of truly astronomical proportions. It involves
fuzzy splotches were often entire galaxies in their own right. physics on wildly disparate scales, from the cosmological evo-
Why do stars reside in gigantic agglomerations separated by lution of the entire universe to the formation of a single star.
vast voids, and how do galaxies take on their bewildering vari- That makes it difficult to build realistic models of galaxy for-
ety of shapes, sizes and masses? These questions have consumed mation, yet it brings the whole subject full circle. The discov-
astronomers for decades. It is not possible for us to observe a ery of all those billions of galaxies made stellar astronomy and
galaxy forming; the process is far too slow. Instead researchers cosmology seem mutually irrelevant. In the grand scheme of
have to piece the puzzle together by observing many different things, stars were just too small to matter; conversely, debates
galaxies, each caught at a different phase in its evolutionary his- over the origin of the universe struck most stellar astronomers
tory. Such measurements did not become routine until about as hopelessly abstract. Now we know that a coherent picture
of the universe must take in both the large and the small.
Overview/Galaxy Evolution Galactic Species

EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY/BARTHEL/NEESER (preceding pages)

■ One of the liveliest subfields of astrophysics right now is T O U N D E R S T A N D H O W galaxies form, astronomers look for
the study of how galaxies take shape. Telescopes are patterns and trends in their properties. According to the classi-
probing the very earliest galaxies, and computer fication scheme developed by Hubble, galaxies may be broadly
simulations can track events in unprecedented detail. divided into three major types: elliptical, spiral and irregular [see
■ Researchers may soon do for galaxies what they did for illustration on opposite page]. The most massive ones are the el-
stars in the early 20th century: provide a unified lipticals. These are smooth, featureless, almost spherical systems
explanation, based on a few general processes, for a huge with little or no gas or dust. In them, stars buzz around the cen-
diversity of celestial bodies. For galaxies, those ter like bees around a hive. Most of the stars are very old.
processes include gravitational instability, radiative Spiral galaxies, such as our own Milky Way, are highly flat-
cooling, relaxation (whereby galaxies reach internal tened and organized structures in which stars and gas move on
equilibrium) and interactions among galaxies. circular or near-circular orbits around the center. In fact, they
■ Several vexing questions remain, however. A possible are also known as disk galaxies. The pinwheel-like spiral arms
answer to these questions is that stars, seemingly are filaments of hot young stars, gas and dust. At their centers,
insignificant to such large bodies as galaxies, actually spiral galaxies contain bulges— spheroidal clumps of stars that
have a profound and pervasive effect on their structure. are reminiscent of miniature elliptical galaxies. Roughly a third
of spiral galaxies have a rectangular structure toward the cen-

48 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN JUNE 2002

COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
 TYPES OF GALAXIES
ASTRONOMERS SORT GALAXIES using the “tuning fork” classification scheme
developed by American astronomer Edwin Hubble in the 1920s. According to ELLIPTICALS
this system, galaxies come in three basic types: elliptical (represented by the
handle of the fork at right), spiral (shown as prongs) and irregular (shown
below at left). The smallest galaxies, known as dwarfs, have their own
uncertain taxonomy.
Within each of the types are subtypes that depend on the details of the M89
galaxy’s shape. Going from the top of the tuning fork to the bottom, the galactic E0
disk becomes more prominent in optical images and the central bulge less so.
The different Hubble types may represent various stages of development.
Galaxies start off as spirals without bulges, undergo a collision during which
they appear irregular, and end up as ellipticals or as spirals with bulges.
— G.K. and F.v.d.B.
M49
IRREGULARS E4

M82
Irregular M110
E5
DWARF TYPES

M84
M32 S0
Elliptical
BARRED SPIRALS NORMAL SPIRALS

VII Zw 403 NGC 660 NGC 7217

Blue Compact SBa Sa

Small Magellanic Cloud NGC 7479 NGC 4622

Irregular SBb Sb

Leo I M58 M51

Spheroidal SBc Sc

N. A. SHARP/NOAO/AURA/NSF (M82); B. KEEL/HALL TELESCOPE/LOWELL OBSERVATORY (M32); R. SCHULTE-LADBECK/U. HOPP/M. CRONE/ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL (blue compact dwarf);
NOAO/AURA/NSF (Small Magellanic Cloud); DAVID MALIN, © ANGLO-AMERICAN OBSERVATORY (Leo I); NOAO/AURA/NSF (M89, M49, M110, M84); R. BRANCH/R. MILNER/A. BLOCK/NOAO/
AURA/NSF (NGC 660); A. BLOCK/NOAO/AURA/NSF (NGC 7479); F. CIESLAK/A. BLOCK/NOAO/AURA/NSF (M58); B. KEEL/R. BUTA/G. PURCELL/CERRO TOLOLO INTER-AMERICAN OBSERVATORY,
CHILE (NGC 7217); G. BYRD/R. BUTA/T. FREEMAN/NASA (NGC 4622); NASA/STSCI/AURA (M51)

COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

 Supercomputer
simulations of the spatial distribution
of galaxies are in excellent agreement
with observations .

ter. Such “bars” are thought to arise from instabilities in the disk. that every galaxy may go through one or more episodes of
Irregular galaxies are those that do not fit into the spiral or AGN activity. As long as matter falls into the black hole, the
elliptical classifications. Some appear to be spirals or ellipticals nucleus is active. When no new material is supplied to the cen-
that have been violently distorted by a recent encounter with a ter, it lies dormant.
neighbor. Others are isolated systems that have an amorphous Most of the information we have about all these phenom-
structure and exhibit no signs of any recent disturbance. ena comes from photons: optical photons from stars, radio
Each of these three classes covers galaxies with a wide range photons from neutral hydrogen gas, x-ray photons from ion-
of luminosities. On average, however, ellipticals are brighter ized gas. But the vast majority of the matter in the universe may
than spirals, and fainter galaxies are more likely than their lu- not emit photons of any wavelength. This is the infamous dark
minous counterparts to be irregular. For the faintest galaxies, matter, whose existence is inferred solely from its gravitation-
the classification scheme breaks down altogether. These dwarf al effects. The visible parts of galaxies are believed to be en-
galaxies are heterogeneous in nature, and attempts to pigeon- veloped in giant “halos” of dark matter. These halos, unlike
hole them have proved controversial. Loosely speaking, they fall those found above the heads of saints, have a spherical or el-
into two categories: gas-rich systems where stars are actively lipsoidal shape. On larger scales, analogous halos are thought

AND G. LEMSON, A. ELDAR AND A. DEKEL Hebrew University, Israel (simulation of galaxy formation in a region 900 million light-years across)
forming and gas-poor systems where no stars are forming. to keep clusters of galaxies bound together.
An important clue to the origin of the galaxy types comes Unfortunately, no one has ever detected dark matter di-
from the striking correlation between type and local galaxy den- rectly, and its nature is still one of the biggest mysteries in sci-
sity. Most galaxies are scattered through space far from their ence. Currently most astronomers favor the idea that dark mat-
nearest neighbor, and of these only 10 to 20 percent are ellipti- ter consists mostly of hitherto unidentified particles that bare-
cals; spirals dominate. The remaining galaxies, however, are ly interact with ordinary particles or with one another.

H. MATHIS, V. SPRINGEL, G. KAUFFMANN AND S.D.M. WHITE Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany,
packed into clusters, and for them the situation is reversed. El- Astronomers typically refer to this class of particles as cold dark
lipticals are the majority, and the spirals that do exist are ane- matter (CDM) and any cosmological model that postulates
mic systems depleted of gas and young stars. This so-called mor- their existence as a CDM model.
phology-density relation has long puzzled astronomers. Over the past two decades, astronomers have painstaking-
ly developed a model of galaxy formation based on CDM. The
Light and Dark basic framework is the standard big bang theory for the expan-
A S M A L L P E R C E N T A G E of spirals and ellipticals are peculiar sion of the universe. Cosmologists continue to debate how the
in that they contain an exceedingly luminous, pointlike core— expansion got going and what transpired early on, but these un-
an active galactic nucleus (AGN). The most extreme and rarest certainties do not matter greatly for galaxy formation. We pick
examples are the quasars, which are so bright that they com- up the story about 100,000 years after the big bang, when the
pletely outshine their host galaxies. Astronomers generally be- universe consisted of baryons (that is, ordinary matter, pre-
lieve that AGNs are powered by black holes weighing millions dominantly hydrogen and helium nuclei), electrons (bound to
to billions of solar masses. Theory predicts that gas falling into the nuclei), neutrinos, photons and CDM. Observations indi-
these monsters will radiate about 10 percent of its intrinsic en- cate that the matter and radiation were distributed smoothly:
ergy, sufficient to generate a beacon that can be detected on the
other side of the universe. GUINEVERE KAUFFMANN and FRANK VAN DEN BOSCH are re-
THE AUTHORS

Once considered anomalies, AGNs have recently been searchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garch-
shown to be integral to the process of galaxy formation. The ing, Germany. They are among the world’s experts on the theo-
peak of AGN activity occurred when the universe was ap- retical modeling of galaxy formation. Kauffmann has recently
proximately a fourth of its present age— the same time that turned her attention to analyzing data from the Sloan Digital Sky
most of the stars in ellipticals were being formed. Furthermore, Survey, which she believes holds the answers to some of the mys-
supermassive black holes are now believed to reside in virtual- teries highlighted in this article. In her spare time, she enjoys ex-
ly every elliptical galaxy, as well as every spiral galaxy that has ploring Bavaria with her son, Jonathan. Van den Bosch is partic-
a bulge, regardless of whether those galaxies contain an AGN ularly intrigued by the formation of disk galaxies and of massive
[see “The Hole Shebang,” by George Musser; News and Analy- black holes in galactic centers. In his free time, he can often be
sis, Scientific American, October 2000]. The implication is found in a Munich beer garden.

50 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN JUNE 2002

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 COOKING UP A GALAXY
THREE BASIC PROCESSES dictated how the
primordial soup congealed into galaxies:
the overall expansion of the universe in
the big bang, the force of gravity, and the
motion of particles and larger
constituents. The shifting balance
among these processes can explain why
galaxies became discrete, coherent
bodies rather than a uniform gas or a
horde of black holes. In this theory, small
bodies coalesce first and then glom
together to form larger objects. A crucial
ingredient is dark matter, which reaches
a different equilibrium than ordinary
matter. — G.K. and F.v.d.B. 1 In the beginning, a primordial fluid— a
mixture of ordinary matter (blue) and
dark matter (red)— fills the universe. Its
2 At first, cosmic expansion overpowers
gravity. The fluid thins out. But patches
of higher density thin out more slowly than
density varies subtly from place to place. other regions do.

RADIATION

3 Eventually these patches become so

dense, relative to their surroundings,
that gravity takes over from expansion.
4 As each patch collapses, it attains
equilibrium. The density, both of
ordinary and of dark matter, peaks at the
5 Dark matter, being unable to radiate,
retains this shape. But ordinary matter
emits radiation, collapses into a rotating
The patches start to collapse. center and decreases toward the edge. disk and begins to condense into stars.

6 Protogalaxies interact, exerting

torques on one another and merging 7 When two disks of similar size merge,
the stellar orbits become scrambled. 8 The merger triggers new star formation
and feeds material into the central
DON DIXON

to form larger and larger bodies. (This step An elliptical galaxy results. Later a disk black hole, generating an active galactic
overlaps with steps 4 and 5.) may develop around the elliptical. nucleus, which can spew plasma jets.

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the density at different positions varied by only about one part fills the universe. But once the region collapses, it starts to take
in 100,000. The challenge is to trace how these simple ingredi- on an internal life of its own. The system— which we shall call
ents could give rise to the dazzling variety of galaxies. a protogalaxy from here on— seeks to establish some form of
If one compares the conditions back then with the distribu- equilibrium. Astronomers refer to this process as relaxation. The
tion of matter today, two important differences stand out. First, baryons behave like the particles of any gas. Heated by shock
the present-day universe spans an enormous range of densities. waves that are triggered by the collapse, they exchange energy
The central regions of galaxies are more than 100 billion times through direct collisions with one another, thus achieving hy-
as dense as the universe on average. The earth is another 10 bil- drostatic equilibrium— a state of balance between pressure and
lion billion times as dense as that. Second, whereas the baryons gravity. The earth’s atmosphere is also in hydrostatic equilibri-
and CDM were initially well mixed, the baryons today form um (or nearly so), which is why the pressure decreases expo-
dense knots (the galaxies) inside gargantuan halos of dark mat- nentially with altitude.
ter. Somehow the baryons have decoupled from the CDM. For the dark matter, however, relaxation is distinctively dif-
The first of these differences can be explained by the pro- ferent. CDM particles are, by definition, weakly interactive; they
cess of gravitational instability. If a region is even slightly more are not able to redistribute energy among themselves by direct
dense than average, the excess mass will exert a slightly stronger- collisions. A system of such particles cannot reach hydrostatic
than-average gravitational force, pulling extra matter toward it- equilibrium. Instead it undergoes what is called, perhaps oxy-
self. This creates an even stronger gravitational field, pulling in moronically, violent relaxation. Each particle exchanges energy
even more mass. This runaway process amplifies the initial den- not with another individual particle but with the collective mass
sity differences. of particles, by way of the gravitational field.
Bodies traveling in a gravitational field are always undergo-
Sit Back and Relax ing an exchange of gravitational and kinetic energy. If you
ALL THE WHILE, the gravity of the region must compete with throw a ball into the air, it rises to a higher altitude but deceler-
the expansion of the universe, which pulls matter apart. Initial- ates: it gains gravitational energy at the expense of kinetic en-
ly cosmic expansion wins and the density of the region decreas- ergy. On the way down, the ball gains kinetic energy at the ex-
es. The key is that it decreases more slowly than the density of pense of gravitational energy. CDM particles in a protogalaxy
its surroundings. At a certain point, the overdensity of the re- behave much the same way. They move around and change
gion compared with its surroundings becomes so pronounced speed as their balance of gravitational and kinetic energy shifts.
that its gravitational attraction overcomes the cosmic expansion. But unlike balls near the earth’s surface, CDM particles move
The region starts to collapse. in a gravitational field that is not constant. After all, the gravi-
Up to this point, the region is not a coherent object but mere- tational field is produced by all the particles together, which are
ly a random enhancement of density in the haze of matter that undergoing collapse.

GALACTIC DENSITY VARIATIONS

DENSITY VARIATIONS in the pregalactic universe followed a primordial plasma.) A small wave was superimposed on a
pattern that facilitated the formation of protogalaxies. The slightly larger wave, which was superimposed on an even larger
variations were composed of waves of various wavelengths in wave, and so on. Therefore, the highest density occurred over
a pattern that music connoisseurs will recognize as “pink the smallest regions. These regions collapsed first and became
noise.” (Indeed, they originated as sound waves in the the building blocks for larger structures. —G.K. and F.v.d.B.

REGIONS THAT
COLLAPSE FIRST

AVERAGE DENSITY
DENSITY

SARA CHEN

POSITION

52 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN JUNE 2002

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 Astronomers
may be directly observing,
for the first time, the formation of
elliptical galaxies.
Changes in the gravitational field cause some particles to Take a Spin
gain energy and others to lose energy. Just as for the baryons, THE HIERARCHICAL PICTURE naturally explains the shapes
this redistribution of the energies of the particles allows the sys- of galaxies. In spiral galaxies, stars and gas move on circular or-
tem to relax, forming a CDM halo that is said to be in virial equi- bits. The structure of these galaxies is therefore governed by an-
librium. The process is complicated and has never been worked gular momentum. Where does this angular momentum come
out in great theoretical detail. Instead researchers track it using from? According to the standard picture, when protogalaxies
numerical simulations, which show that all CDM halos in viri- filled the universe, they exerted tidal forces on one another, caus-
al equilibrium have similar density profiles. ing them to spin. After the protogalaxies collapsed, each was left
The end point of the collapse and relaxation of a proto- with a net amount of angular momentum.
galaxy is a dark matter halo, inside of which the baryonic gas is When the gas in the protogalaxies then started to cool, it
in hydrostatic equilibrium at a temperature of typically a few contracted and started to fall toward the center. Just as ice-
million degrees. Whereas each CDM particle conserves its en- skaters spin faster when they pull in their arms, the gas rotated
ergy from then on, the baryonic gas is able to emit radiation. It faster and faster as it contracted. The gas thus flattened out, in
cools, contracts and accumulates at the center of the dark mat- the same way that the earth is slightly flatter than a perfect sphere
ter halo. Cooling, therefore, is the process responsible for de- because of its rotation. Eventually the gas was spinning so fast
coupling the baryons from the CDM. that the centrifugal force (directed outward) became equal to the
So far we have focused on a single protogalaxy and ignored gravitational pull (directed inward). By the time the gas attained
its surroundings. In reality, other protogalaxies will form near- centrifugal equilibrium, it had flattened into a thin disk. The disk
by. Gravity will pull them together until they merge to form a was sufficiently dense that the gas started to clump into the
grander structure. This structure will itself merge, and so on. Hi- clouds, out of which stars then formed. A spiral galaxy was born.
erarchical buildup is a characteristic feature of CDM models. Because most dark matter halos end up with some angular
The reason is simple. Because small-scale fluctuations in densi- momentum, one has to wonder why all galaxies aren’t spirals.
ty are superimposed on larger-scale fluctuations, the density How did ellipticals come into being? Astronomers have long held
reaches its highest value over the smallest regions. An analogy two competing views. One is that most of the stars in present-day
is the summit of a mountain. The exact position of the peak cor- ellipticals and bulges formed during a monolithic collapse at ear-

FROM ATLAS OF PECULIAR GALAXIES, BY HALTON ARP (California Institute of Technology, 1966);
responds to a tiny structure: for example, a pebble on top of a ly epochs. The other is that ellipticals are relative latecomers, hav-

nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/frames.html (merging galaxies known as Arp 270)

rock on top of a hill on top of the summit. If a cloud bank de- ing been produced as a result of the merging of spiral galaxies.
scends on the mountain, the pebble vanishes first, followed by The second view has come to enjoy increasing popularity.
the rock, the hill and eventually the whole mountain. Detailed computer simulations of the merger of two spirals show
Similarly, the densest regions of the early universe are the that the strongly fluctuating gravitational field destroys the two
smallest protogalaxies. They are the first regions to collapse, fol- disks. The stars within the galaxies are too spread out to bang
lowed by progressively larger structures. What distinguishes into one another, so the merging process is quite similar to the
CDM from other possible types of dark matter is that it has den- violent relaxation suffered by dark matter. If the galaxies are of
sity fluctuations on all scales. Neutrinos, for example, lack fluc- comparable mass, the result is a smooth clump of stars with
tuations on small scales. A neutrino-dominated universe would properties that strongly resemble an elliptical. Much of the gas
be like a mountain with an utterly smooth summit. in the two original disk galaxies loses its angular momentum and
The hierarchical formation of dark matter halos cannot be plummets toward the center. There the gas reaches high densities
described using simple mathematical relationships. It is best and starts to form stars at a frenzied rate. At later times, new gas
studied using numerical simulations. To emulate a representa- may fall in, cool off and build up a new disk around the ellipti-
tive part of the universe with enough resolution to see the for- cal. The result will be a spiral galaxy with a bulge in the middle.
mation of individual halos, researchers must use the latest su- The high efficiency of star formation during mergers ex-
percomputers. The statistical properties and spatial distribu- plains why ellipticals typically lack gas: they have used it up.
tion of the halos emerging from these simulations are in The merger model also accounts for the morphology-density
excellent agreement with those of observed galaxies, providing relation: a galaxy in a high-density environment will undergo
strong support for the hierarchical picture and hence for the ex- more mergers and is thus more likely to become an elliptical.
istence of CDM. Observational evidence confirms that mergers and interac-

56 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN JUNE 2002

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 tions have been common in the universe, particularly early on. hole. In other words, quasars were more common in the past
In Hubble Space Telescope images, many ancient galaxies have because mergers were much more common then.
disturbed morphologies, a telltale sign of interaction. More- As for dwarf galaxies, in the hierarchical picture they are
over, the number of starburst galaxies— in which stars form at the leftovers— small clumps that have yet to merge. Recent ob-
a frenetic pace— increases dramatically at earlier times. As- servations show that star formation in dwarfs is particularly er-
tronomers may be directly observing, for the first time, the for- ratic, coming in short bursts separated by long quiescent peri-
mation of elliptical galaxies. ods [see “Dwarf Galaxies and Starbursts,” by Sara C. Beck; Sci-
If elliptical galaxies and spiral bulges are linked to galaxy entific American, June 2000]. In heftier galaxies such as the
mergers, then it follows that supermassive black holes may be Milky Way, star formation occurs at a more constant rate.
created in these events, too. Hole masses are strongly correlat- These results are intriguing because astronomers have often
ed with the mass of the surrounding elliptical galaxy or bulge; hypothesized that the mass of a galaxy determines its fertility.
they are not correlated with the mass of the spiral disk. Merg- In lightweight galaxies, supernova explosions can easily disrupt
er models have been extended to incorporate supermassive or even rid the system of its gas, thus choking off star forma-
holes and therefore AGNs. The abundant gas that is funneled tion. Even the smallest perturbation can have a dramatic effect.
toward the center during a merger could revive a dormant black It is this sensitivity to initial conditions and random events

HOW RELAXING
AN INTERNAL STATE OF EQUILIBRIUM is what makes a galaxy a its shape and density profile. (An analogous equilibrium determines
distinct object rather than merely an arbitrary patch of space. This the size and temperature of stars.) The ordinary matter and dark
equilibrium determines the overall properties of the galaxy, such as matter attain equilibrium by different means.
ORDINARY MATTER

1 The ordinary matter— predominantly

hydrogen gas— starts off moving every
which way. Its density varies randomly.
2 The gas particles bang into one
another, redistributing energy and
generating a pressure that resists gravity.
3 Eventually the gas settles down into
hydrostatic equilibrium, with the
density highest near the center of gravity.

DARK MATTER

1 2 3
DON DIXON

Initially the dark matter has the same As the particles move around, the Gradually the system settles down into
arrangement as ordinary matter. The gravitational field changes, which virial equilibrium, in which the
difference is that the particles do not collide. causes particles to gain or lose energy. gravitational field no longer fluctuates.

www.sciam.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 57

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 Supernova explosions
could expel mass from low-mass
galaxies so efficiently that hardly
any stars would form.
that may account for the heterogeneity of the galactic dwarfs. think that the action of stars might actually solve all three prob-
Although the standard picture of galaxy formation is re- lems at once. The energy released by stars can heat the gas, ob-
markably successful, researchers are still far from working out viating the cooling catastrophe. Heating also slows the descent
all the processes involved. Moreover, they have yet to resolve of gas toward the center of the galaxy and thereby reduces its
some troubling inconsistencies. The simple picture of gas cool- tendency to transfer angular momentum to the dark matter—
ing inside dark matter halos faces an important problem known alleviating the angular momentum problem. And supernova ex-
as the cooling catastrophe. Calculations of the cooling rates im- plosions could expel mass from the galaxies back into the in-
ply that the gas should have cooled briskly and pooled in the cen- tergalactic medium [see “Colossal Galactic Explosions,” by Syl-
ters of halos, leaving intergalactic space virtually empty. Yet the vain Veilleux, Gerard Cecil and Jonathan Bland-Hawthorn;
space between galaxies is far from empty. Some extra input of Scientific American, February 1996]. For the lowest-mass
energy must have prevented the gas from cooling down. halos, whose escape velocity is small, the process could be so
efficient that hardly any stars form, which would explain why
Some Feedback, Please we observe fewer dwarf galaxies than predicted.
ANOTHER PROBLEM CONCERNS angular momentum. The Because our understanding of these processes is poor, the
amount of angular momentum imparted to protogalaxies in the models still have a lot of wiggle room. It remains to be seen
models is comparable to the angular momentum that we actu- whether the problems really can be fixed or whether they indi-
ally see in spiral galaxies. So long as the gas retains its angular cate a need for a completely new framework. Our theory of
momentum, the CDM picture reproduces the observed sizes of galaxy formation will surely continue to evolve. The observa-
spirals. Unfortunately, in the simulations the angular momen- tional surveys under way, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey,
tum leaks away. Much of it is transferred to the dark matter dur- will enormously improve the data on both nearby and distant
ing galaxy mergers. As a result, the disks emerging from these galaxies. Further advances in cosmology will help constrain the
simulations are a factor of 10 too small. Apparently the models initial conditions for galaxy formation. Already, precise obser-
are still missing an essential ingredient. vations of the cosmic microwave background radiation have

GERALD CECIL ET AL. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill AND NASA (superbubble in NGC 3079)
A third inconsistency has to do with the number of dwarf pinned down the values of the large-scale cosmological para-
galaxies. Hierarchical theories predict a proliferation of low- meters, freeing galactic modelers to focus on the small-scale in-
mass dark matter halos and, by extension, dwarf galaxies. These tricacy. Soon we may unite the large, the small and the medium
are simply not seen. In the neighborhood of the Milky Way, the into a seamless picture of cosmic evolution. SA
number of low-mass dwarfs is a factor of 10 to 100 lower than
theories predict. Either these dark matter halos do not exist or MORE TO E XPLORE
they are present but have eluded detection because stars do not Cosmological Physics. John A. Peacock. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
form within them. The Formation of Ellipticals, Black Holes and Active Galactic Nuclei:
Several solutions have been suggested for these problems. A Theoretical Perspective. Guinevere Kauffmann, Stéphane Charlot and
Martin G. Haehnelt in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of
The proposals fall into two classes: either a fundamental change London, Series A, Vol. 358, No. 1772, pages 2121–2132; July 15, 2000.
to the model, perhaps to the nature of dark matter [see “What’s The Big Bang. Joseph Silk. W. H. Freeman and Company, 2001.
the Matter?” by George Musser; News and Analysis, Scientif- The Morphological Evolution of Galaxies. Roberto G. Abraham and
ic American, May 2000], or a revision of our picture of how Sidney van den Bergh in Science, Vol. 293, No. 5533, pages 1273–1278;
the cooling gas is transformed into stars. Because most as- August 17, 2001. Available at astro-ph/0109358
tronomers are reluctant to abandon the CDM model, which The Angular Momentum Content of Dwarf Galaxies: New Challenges
for the Theory of Galaxy Formation. Frank C. van den Bosch, Andreas
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much smaller than a typical galaxy. Incorporating it in full is far New Perspectives in Astrophysical Cosmology. Martin Rees. Second
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