A study conducted by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) could help understand how gravitational instabilities are connected to galaxy evolution.
K. Aditya, a post-doctoral fellow at the IIA, tried to explore how gravitational instabilities are connected with the star formation, gas fraction, time scale for growth of gravitational instabilities and finally, the observed morphology.
“They then compared the star formation rate, gas fraction, and time scale for the growth of gravitational instabilities of nearby galaxies and investigated the stability levels of a sample of 175 galaxies taken from the Spitzer Photometry and Accurate Rotation Curves (SPARC) database. This helped them trace the role of dark matter in regulating the stability levels of the galaxies and understand if stars and gas can self-regulate the stability levels,” Department of Science and Technology (DST) said.
