Title:

Cosmology with the Milky Way



Matthias Steinmetz
Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam (AIP)




Abstract:

How have the Milky Way and other galaxies in the Universe been formed ?
In a monolithic giant collapse about 10 billion years ago or due to the
successive merging of smaller protogalactic clumps as envisioned by the
current cosmological "concordance model" ? In the latter case,
signatures of this formation history should be locked up in the
kinematic and chemical properties of stellar populations awaiting
discovery. The newest generation of computer simulations are now making
quite specific predictions on how to trace these signatures and new
observational campaigns from the ground and in space have been started
to search for them. Indeed, the first couple of examples have been
clearly identified. Together, observations and simulations will soon
enable us to reconstruct the formation history of the Milky Way and,
possibly, of other galaxies in the Local Group.