Science discussions
Yesterday and today I visited my old institute (INPE) to see the friends and to try to keep some projects running.
Some progress was made on the paper about detection of point sources in the BEAST CMB data, M.Sc. thesis that I co-supervised with C. A. Wuensche. Now this paper may be on the right track, I hope.
Also some ideas discussed with the old boss H. Capelato, let's see which will survive!!
Little science "done" but lots of coffee, and good brazilian coffee :-)))
News from the south
I´m at home!!!
Friday there was no science, since the trip is long. Couple of hours of train, long hours of plane and some hours waiting in between. Had to drink the terrible coffee from Lufthansa ... :-))
Weekend at home!
Today, no science, also, but I could write about the IAP conference, or aboutwhat the people said there!
After the Marseille and the IAP conference you can notice a selection effect on the talks, even though both conferences were about evolution of galaxies.
Marseille was more "high redshift" and deep surveys focused and IAP was more focused on simulations with some space to alternative theories.
First day was mainly simulations.
First Dekel opened with a talk where bimodality was the main topic, theyfind it at the luminosity function, age and surface brightness distributionsand it is attributed to the fact that below a critical mass there's no shockand you have a cold infall on the disk and above this mass you have shock. This would be the origin of the red and blue sequences ("dead and red" galaxies and star forming disks, respectively).
Julio Navarro showed some new simulations on galaxy formation, the part that called my attention was about the question that the central stars at created "in situ"and the stars accreted from destructed satellites form the halo. On this simulationmost of the satellites are destructed. He mentioned that there's an excess of starson the MW minor axis in the SDSS images and this also happens on M31.
Ben Moore commented that the "over merger" problem is almost solved on simulations.
Gottloeber mentioned environmental effects where triaxial haloes are determinedby the last merger and the most massive halos are aligned with the parents. Andthat stars are aligned with the Dark Matter and the gas.
Zentner showed that the alignment of the MW satellites in a polar distributionis not inconsistent with the simulations and with the "excess of small haloes".
On the second day more simulations.
Simon White told us that the central particles on z=0 haloes are spread around the haloesin z=1.
Salvador-Sole presented the results discussed some days ago, but with angular momentum.
Klypin showed cosmological simulations with gas that recover the rotation curves. Somerotating bar of DM following the stellar ones.
Gnedin presented the importance of adiabatic contraction on the simulations.
Now a little bit of observations.
McGaugh showed how MOND presents better results than other models to the rotation curves.
Ibata presented this very deep survey in M31 where lots of information about the galaxy halowere showed, a stream of 125 kpc was found and a new type of globular cluster was also identified.I still have to check if they are similar to the ones identified by Jean Brodie and Soren Larsenin S0 galaxies (the faint fuzzies).
To end the day models of polar rings by Combes, where accretion models show more similaritiesthan collision models, to form this kind of structure.
Third day models and observations.
Wilkinson reviewed the kinematics of the dSph of the local group. Velocities dispersionsof 7-10 km/s, core radii of 130 to 500 pc and M/L from 3 to 300. The results are consistentwith high M/L, cored DM distributions and M ~ 6 10^7 M_sol.
Romanowsky reviewed the masses of elliptical galaxies from internal kinematics using probessuch as PNe, GCs and X-ray. DM content of the faint elliptical may be a problem for LCDM andthe bright ones are a problem to MOND.
Mamon presented simulations showing the kinematical and dynamical modeling of mass profiles of elliptical galaxies using different profiles.
Forth day, the observational day!
Kochanek showed that lensing is the good probe for intermediate scales constraining total mass(light and DM) and not the mass distribution.
Brainerd showed that in SDSS the satellites are close to the major axis of the hosts, oppositeto the Holmberg effect.
Koopmans presented nice results using galaxy-galaxy lensing and spectroscopy to mass studies.
Arnaboldi presented the use of PNe to study the Intracluster component in Virgo and Coma. Virgo has 10% of its light in this component and it is very inhomogeneous showing large field to fieldvariations in the PNes counts. Coma also do not have a relaxed intracluster component. A veryinteresting technique to detect PNes in clusters using multislit spectroscopy and narrow bandfilters. I have to admit that this was the talk more related to my work, so that I really liked hehehehe
Zabludoff presented intracluster studies (the ones from Gonzales) the metallicity studies of thoseintracluster haloes by X-ray and variations on the fundamental plane, when you include thewhole cluster as an "spheroid". Those variations can be fitted when you add a second orderterm on the relation.
Ponman talked about groups studied using X-rays and also of the "fossil groups".
Fifth day more observations!! And the alternative theories.
Mellier reviewed the weak lensing.
Tully talked about observations of infall and caustics.
Clowe showed the shock of clusters which can be modeled using X-ray and weak lensing, constrainingthe DM haloes.
In the afternoon I was feeling very bad because of a cold that "finally" knocked me down and Ilost most of the talks, including Milgrom´s and Carroll´s. I could show up for Sanders talkingfor Bekenstein about the relativistic MOND and Woodard talking about a covariant formulationfor MOND.
Sixth and last day, I was like "half dead" because of the cold and six days of conferenceare too heavy :-)
The main discussion was on "how to test and rule out theories (CDM, MOND, ...)" but no real conclusions were ... achieved.
Of course there was a lot of coffee in Paris, some in nice places of the town!
Here in Brazil I already had some coffee (the best one) and I´be taking some back to Germany!
Message transmitted, signal received
One more day with "no science". I have problems to do science when I'm preparing a trip. Tomorrow I'm going to Brazil, today I was arranging things for the trip ... shame on me! At least I finally submitted the paper!! YEEEEEIIII!! And they acknowledged that they received and it already has a number. Now is just wait for the referee comments.
I started to write the summary of the IAP conference, but it has more things worth commenting than I thought! And I have to interrupt it because I had to pack for the trip! :-) I'll try to finish tomorrow and put it here before getting my train to Frankfurt!
Today a regular espresso ... as always! hehehehe
Paperwork ... not paper IRCHH
The day was totally dominated by paperwork! The large amount of stuff you have to do to receive back the money you spent on conferences (which I think you should receive in advance).
Besides that I manage to pass the paper to MNRAS style with no problems. Takes a while to reconfigure the references (they use some extra fields on the "bibitem") and to move my pretty tables from deluxetable to "ugly" regular LaTeX table ... anyway.
That was the day. Only one espresso and a home capuccino (right now).
The good news are ... got a ticket to next friday to BRASIL (i.e. home)!! See my wife, my parents, my friends and drink real coffee.
Still with the paper!!!
Whole day with the paper! Tomorrow last comments, change style and submition!
Too tired for conference summaries!
Did I had coffee today???
Back from Paris
I'm back from Paris. The conference was great and long (6 days of conference, I'll try to make a summary tomorrow), the weather was lousy, but I could see the town, see talks of people I like the work and so on.
As every time you come back from a conference, the first day is DEAD! Resting in the morning (I've got home late at night yesterday), trying to read all the e-mails, meeting with the group to be update of what's going on and trying to finish the paper. It will be finished tomorrow ... anyway! But I'll have to change the LaTeX macro, because we are now sending it to MNRAS and not to AJ (this one is too expencive and we have no budget for that). This will be tomorrow "science".
Today, no science :-)
A little summary of "Salvador-Sole et al, 2005 (MNRAS, 358, 901)" as asked by David Hogg.
- They've modeled Dark Matter Halos (relaxed, non-rotating, spherically symmetric, even though in Paris he showed the results for rotating DM halo and is the same kind of result).
- The model can use different cosmologies and the "typical" accretion rates lead to a NFW profile.
- There are no differences between halos formed by major mergers or by gentle accretion with the same mass and boundary conditions.
- The properties of the halo depends only on: Mass, Energy and the instantaneous accretion rates of those quantities (M, E, Mdot and Edot).
- No relation of density profile and mass agregation history (MAH) - Main conclusion.
- Some correlations found previously can still be explained on that light (mass-concentration relation, for example).
Basically that's it. On the new work presented in Paris, also the Angular Momentum (since now the halos rotate) are included in the properties which are independent of the MAH.
Today I still have to reply collaborators mails about other work of us ...
The only new about coffee ... brought some from France hehehehehe :-)))
Paper finished (???)
Paper finished ... I hope. With the delay caused by the server problem yesterday I did today the yesterday work ... a nice error analysis for the diffuse light component, based on my simulations. It took me a while to figure out how to treat this correctly, but I think I found it.
The paper was suppose to be submitted today, but as it took a while to finish also, the collaborators left, so that they will comment while I'm in a conference in Paris, and I'll have to reply it only the other week, a 10 days delay on submition. It's OK, I should have sent this an year ago :-))
Besides that I prepared stuff for the trip to Paris, but there's still things to arrange, so that I'll be here tomorrow (as always before a trip).
Still trying to figure out the merger rates and properties.
Also thinking about the relaxation times of the dark matter halos in a cluster and in a group. Should the group's relax faster than the cluster's? Or not?
Today I tried the new espresso machine! Good coffee, just beside my office (not beside but close)!!
Paper day! (still on 30 june :-) )
Even though we (Brazil) were champions of the Confederations Coup (not sure that's the name) and specially a 4X1 victory over Argentina, our eternal rival on soccer, the forecast for today was bad!
Lots of work to do, so, no cycling and some other important, non-work related, issues on mind ...
Tried to solve problems and when I finally got to work on the paper ... problems with our main server (our system is highly centralized, so all the software is located in one server ... no server, no nothing, my machine just crashed and there was no way I could get the files I needed ...).
Finally after 2 hours trying I managed getting them and comming home to work (as paradoxal as it can sound). After a couple of hours, the paper is only missing the part which in I need the data to finish! Tomorrow it will be sent to the journal!! Finally!!!!!
Tomorrow the day starts with laundry, so that I can go to this conference in Paris next week, later, paper paper and paper, until it's ready!!!
Today, just a machine espresso! Our SAECO espresso machine arrived, tomorrow I'll try the coffee if it's good!!
