Colloq Abstract - Rudnick
November 16, 2018
11:00am Mountain
Larry Rudnick (U. Minnesota)
The Stormy Life of Galaxy Clusters
Abstract
Galaxy clusters, the largest gravitationally bound structures, hold the full history of their baryonic evolution, serve as important cosmological tools and allow us to probe unique physical regimes in their diffuse thermal and relativistic plasmas. With dynamical timescales of 107-109 years, these diffuse plasmas encode the history of the dark matter driven assembly. In the X-ray, temperature and density variations, low Mach number shocks, and "cold front" discontinuities all serve as signatures. Radio structures illuminate merger shocks and turbulence, while radio galaxy distortions reveal the complex motions in the intracluster medium. I will give an overview of these multiwavelength probes, show some absolutely lovely current radio observations, and peak at some new insights emerging from the citizen science project Radio Galaxy Zoo.
