A cosmological context for compact massive galaxies

01/06/2015
Scientists at the IAC, the Severo Ochoa postdocs Martin Stringer and Claudio Dalla Vecchia among them, had theoretically studied the formation histories and location of compact massive galaxies using data from the BOLSHOI simulation, one of the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe to date. Among other results thay conclude that over 80 per cent of exceptionally compact systems are substructures of more massive groups or clusters, and that the probability of a given massive substructure being this compact increases significantly with the mass of the host structure. This work has been published in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.