The importance of Galaxy Clusters discussed in the middle of the mountains
“Tracing cosmic evolution with clusters of galaxies” is a workshop focused on the role and importance of galaxy clusters to tracing the evolution and the characterization of the Universe. The galaxy clusters science is a fundamental tool to study the Universe because it gathers multiple aspects of physics from the characterization of the plasma physics of the gas and galaxies and the role as “Universe laboratories” due to the fact that clusters are like "closed box" systems.
The event was held in Sexten (Bolzano) in the middle of the Dolomites mountains in Italy from the 7th to the 12th of July and gathered together more than 150 researchers from all over the world. This workshop was the fourth of a series always held in Sexten since the start in 2001 thanks to the will of Prof Riccardo Giacconi. The Nobel prize winner, in fact, was really bounded with this place and he started organizing and make Sexten a well-known conference centre for Astrophysics. This year’s workshop was in his honour and an extremely warm memorial talk was given by Dr Christine Jones Forman and Dr William Forman that had worked together with him at Harvard during the first days of X-ray Astronomy.
The scientific programme aimed at a great mixture of young researchers and staff members with a great variety of talks and posters covering all the most appealing topic researches with both the simulation and observational results. Great interest was put in the upcoming all-sky surveys as eRosita (successfully launched on the 13th of July), LSST (with a great contribution from UK scientists) and SPT results and Euclid predictions.
The LIV.DAT student Alberto Acuto attended this conference presenting a poster about his current research topic “Improving the halo model with hydrodynamical simulations”. He found really interesting the variety of topics presented and the quality of the speakers present at the event. A lot of interesting discussions were held that will help him in producing better and more interesting scientific results.