Wednesday Colloquium



07.04.2021

"How personalised is our immune repertoire?"

Aleksandra Walczak (Laboratoire de Physique, Ecole Normale Supérieure)

Immune repertoires provide a unique fingerprint reflecting the immune history of individuals, with potential applications in precision medicine. Can this information be used to identify a person uniquely? If it really is a personalised medical record, can it inform us about the outcomes of a COVID-19 infection? I will show how statistical analysis of immune repertoires can answer these questions.


14.04.2021

"Probing elastic quark phases in hybrid stars"

Jonas Periera (CAMK, Warsaw)

In this talk I will discuss some imprints of elastic quark phases on the stability of hybrid stars and possible ways to probe them with current and future electromagnetic missions such as NICER, eXTP and ATHENA.


21.04.2021

"Simulating galaxies at high resolution in their cosmological context with NewHorizon: methods and some key results on galaxy properties and their morphology"

Yohan Dubois (Institut d'astrophysique de Paris)

Hydrodynamical cosmological simulations are increasing their level of realism by considering more physical processes, having more resolution or larger statistics. However, one usually has to either sacrifice the statistical power of such simulations or the resolution reach within galaxies. I will introduce the NewHorizon project where a zoom-in region of∼(16 Mpc)3, larger than a standard zoom-in region around a single halo, embedded in a larger box is simulated at high resolution. A resolution of up to 34 pc, typical of individual zoom-in state-of-the-art resimulated halos is reached within galaxies, allowing the simulation to capture the multi-phase nature of the interstellar medium and the clumpy nature of the star formation process in galaxies. I will present and discuss several key fundamental properties of galaxies and of their black holes. Due to its exquisite spatial resolution, NewHorizon captures the inefficient process of star formation in galaxies, which evolve over time from being more turbulent, gas-rich and star-bursting at high redshift. These high redshift galaxies are also more compact, and are more elliptical, disturbed and clumpier until the level of internal gas turbulence decays enough to allow for the formation of stable rotating discs. I will show the origin and persistence of the thin and thick disc components, and explain why the settling of discs ``magically’’ occurs at around a stellar mass of 1e10 Msun.


28.04.2021

"Quantum Gravity is Coming to Town"

Marek Abramowicz (CAMK, Warsaw)