Joint IAS Princeton University Astrophysics Colloquium

Massive galaxies reside in the densest and most evolved regions of the Universe, yet we are only beginning to understand their formation history. Once thought to be relics of a much earlier epoch, the most massive local galaxies are red and dead...

Hierarchical structure formation in a LCDM cosmology gives rise to virialized dark matter halos that contain a wealth of subtructure. Being able to accurately predict the abundance and demographics of dark matter subhaloes is of paramount...

During its brief period of operation, the Hitomi X-ray observatory (known as Astro-H prior to launch) has observed the Perseus galaxy cluster as a first-light target. This has been a long-awaited first look at a galaxy cluster with an X-ray...

Pulsars are some of physics and astrophysics' most exotic objects, and they have already earned two Nobel Prizes. We currently know of about 2500 of them in our Galaxy, but a small subset, the millisecond pulsars (MSPs), are truly remarkable. These...

Over the past two decades ongoing surveys have detected thousands of new planetary systems around nearby stars. These systems include apparently single gas giant planets on short period orbits, closely packed systems of up to 5-6 “mini-Neptunes”...

Advanced LIGO discovered cosmic gravitational waves and surprised us with giant binary black-hole systems, just in time for the 100th anniversary of Einstein's prediction. Gravitational waves became the latest window on the Universe from violent...

Exo-planets are common, and they span a large range of compositions.The origins of this compositional diversity are largely unconstrained. Among planets that are Earth-like, a second question is how often such planets form hospitable to life. A...

I will summarize the history of IGM temperature measurements from the Lyman-alpha forest as well as the theory for the IGM temperature after reionization. I will show that the simplest theory for thermal evolution, which has little parametric...

Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation have taught us a great deal about the origins and content of the universe, but there is still more information to be extracted, teaching us about the energetic moments in the early universe...