The 2009 ALMA Conference on “Assembly, Gas Content and Star Formation History of Galaxies” wrapped up 2 weeks ago after 4 days of talks and discussions. It was a very interesting conference with great talks and science. Most of the presentations will be posted online in the next week or two, so feel free to check them out.

I wanted to highlight a couple of the talks I found most interesting. Eventually these talks will be online, so you’ll be able to see them. Until then, my brief descriptions will hopefully suffice.

Implications and Applications of the Fundamental Manifold (reference) – Scaling relations within galaxy types have been known for a while (e.g., Tully-Fisher relation for spiral galaxies, fundamental plane for elliptical galaxies), and they are interesting because it seems that galaxies of a certain type generally follow the same trends in their physical properties (e.g., rotation velocity and intrinsic luminosity [mass]). This is encouraging because it suggests the physics governing galaxy assembly and evolution are similar between galaxies. The interesting aspect of this talk is that that a set of galaxy parameters have been found which allow one to place (almost) all galaxies on a single correlation. Most galaxy types follow the same trend, with low scatter, which means random processes don’t dominate the formation process of galaxies.

On the (Non)Evolution of HI Gas in Galaxies (“Swimming Pool Model of Galaxy Formation”; reference) – Looking at Ly-alpha observations out to the somewhat distant Universe (10 billion years ago), the speaker was able to learn about the amount of neutral hydrogen in galaxies as the Universe evolved. He found that there didn’t seem to be much change over 10 billion years, which might be somewhat surprising given galaxies have been forming stars throughout that time. His explanation was that galaxies have a set “pool” of atomic hydrogen. When the pool overflows (due to an accretion event), the extra atomic hydrogen turns into molecular hydrogen and can form stars. But the amount of atomic hydrogen in a galaxy stays roughly constant (i.e. – the pool is always full).

All-sky radio surveys with the WSRT – This talk focused on some new instrumentation being developed at ASTRON for use on their radio telescope (the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope). The coming focal plane array will allow a significantly increased field of view for the telescope, allowing them to survey the sky much faster than has previously been possible. They are proposing to do an all-sky survey for HI, OH, and radio continuum. This is quite exciting as a very little volume of the Universe has been looked at in neutral hydrogen, and that was done in small targeted observations. The future WSRT survey would aim to detect HI out to 4 billion light years! That would provide a wealth of new information on neutral hydrogen. It would be something like the SDSS for neutral hydrogen.

Just a quick note that I am still alive… I have spent all of the week so far at the 2009 AMLA meeting: Assembly, Gas Content and Star Formation History of Galaxies. It has been a very interesting conference with lots of good talks and even a bit of debate. I have gotten to meet a lot of collaborators who I’ve been in email contact with, and some I haven’t. All in all, it’s been a successful meeting. The last day is tomorrow, which should include some good talks. Then, tomorrow night I continue working on proposals. The meeting, although exhausting, has gotten me excited about some new scientific possibilities. That is always a good thing!