Astrophysics at Keele: the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars and planets.

我们生活在一个星球上。为了了解我们的家园，以及我们的家园从何而来，我们需要了解其他恒星周围行星的形成。要做到这一点，我们首先需要找到它们，当一颗行星从恒星前面经过时，我们可以通过观察恒星光线的下降来做到最好。通过建立这种凌日的目录，我们可以找到行星，用地面和太空中最先进的天文望远镜进行详细研究；了解其他行星的样子将有助于我们了解它们是如何形成的，从而了解我们的太阳系是如何形成的。但是行星是围绕恒星形成的，而构成我们的物质本身也是在恒星中形成的。为了了解行星的起源，以及构成我们的恒星物质的起源，我们需要了解恒星如何与它们产生的星际物质云相互作用，它们如何将这些物质燃烧成更重的元素，以及它们如何将这些物质返回星系，形成新一代的恒星和行星（可能还有生命形式）。但是恒星是在星系中形成的，为了理解恒星的形成，我们需要了解星系是如何形成和演化的，星系的组成物质是如何分解成恒星的，恒星对星系的演化有什么影响，以及星系中心形成和成长的超大质量黑洞是如何影响星系演化的。通过利用最新的地基和天基天文台来研究行星、恒星和星系，我们可以更好地了解它们形成和演化的全过程，强调这条链的每一个环节是如何相互联系的，从而提高我们对自己的深层起源和我们在宇宙中的位置的认识。

We live on a planet. To understand our home, and where our home came from, we need to understand the formation of planets around other stars. To do that we first need to find them, and we can do that best by watching for the dips in the light of a star when a planet passes in front of it. By building up a catalogue of such transits we can find planets to study in detail with the leading astronomical telescopes, both on the ground and in space; seeing what other planets are like will help us understand how they formed, and hence how our solar system formed. But planets form around stars, and the stuff we ourselves are made of was itself made in stars. To understand the origin of planets, and the origin of the star-stuff of which we are made, we need to understand how stars interact with the clouds of interstellar material from which they originate, and how they burn that material into heavier elements, and how they then return that material to the galaxy, to form a new generation of stars and planets (and possibly life-forms). But stars form in galaxies, and to understand star formation we need to understand how galaxies form and evolve, and how the stuff galaxies are made of breaks up into stars, and what effect the stars then have on the evolution of galaxies, and how this is affected by the super-massive black holes that form and grow in the centres of galaxies. By using the latest ground-based and space-based observatories to study planets, stars and galaxies we can better understand the whole process of their formation and evolution, emphasizing how every link of this chain is interconnected, and so improve our understanding of our own deep origins and our own place in the universe.