GUAIX member Carmen Eliche has attended to the conference held in Malta from October 19th-21st, 2009. Nearly 200 astrophysicists have confered, discussed, and transfered their knowledge on faint, dust-obscured, or dark components of galaxies during this week. The state-of-the-art cosmological simulations on galaxy formation were shown by their developers, as well as different, exotic theories on AGN radio modes or on binary super massive black holes that are coalescencing. Even the doubts of certain scientists on the existence of dark matter (thought to represent more than 90% of the total matter in the Universe) appeared during the discussion sessions. We presented a poster on numerical simulations, proving that some inner disks and rings in galaxies could have been formed through minor mergers. For a low-resolution version of the poster, click here.

Malta is a beautiful Mediterranean island located at the south of Sicily, full of history and plenty of amazing coasts. Just seeing the blue lagoon (see the picture) from the airplane makes the whole trip to be worth.