Talk Title and Abstract:
Galactic archaeology 2.0
The ultimate goal of Galactic Archaeology is to use stars as tracers to unravel the evolutionary history of our own galaxy, The Milky Way. Galactic Archaeology today is fundamentally different from the field it was a decade ago. The rate by which we unravel the evolutionary history of our Local Universe has been accelerated by our ability to gather extraordinarily large data sets about stars from ever more powerful instruments. But with big data, Galactic Archaeology has also taken a quantum leap forward in its relationship with data science. The quantity of data matters, but our ability to interpret this big data in meaningful ways is paramount. The galaxy’s equivalent to the Rosetta Stone will only emerge when we can see the patterns in data that our own five senses cannot detect and interpret those patterns. Then we may expand beyond purveying the mysteries of the Milky Way to solving them. To this end, I will discuss some recent symbiotic advancements between large-survey astronomy, statistics, and machine learning in Galactic Archaeology. In particular, I will discuss how we can harness information from the myriad stellar tracers to understand the chemical and dynamical evolution of the Milky Way and to constrain the physics of star formation and the interstellar medium. I will also demonstrate how machine learning can alleviate many impasses that currently bottleneck Galactic Archaeology and lead to a fuller picture of the Milky Way.
Would you like to join this Zoom seminar? Please email Donna Hayes.