Understanding our Galactic ecosystem: From the disk of the Milky Way to the formation sites of stars and planets

Project Information

ECOGAL

Grant agreement ID: 855130

DOI

10.3030/855130

EC signature date 4 March 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 August 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 12 659 177,50

EU contribution

€ 12 659 177,25

Coordinated by

COMMISSARIAT A L ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVES
France

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ECOGAL (Understanding our Galactic ecosystem: From the disk of the Milky Way to the formation sites of stars and planets)

Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Stars and planets are born from a large reservoir of diffuse gas and dust that permeates the Galaxy, the interstellar medium (ISM). The process is governed by the complex interplay of often competing physical agents such as gravity, turbulence, magnetic fields, and radiation. The system is organized in a hierarchy of scales, that link the disk of the Milky Way, to star-forming clouds, and eventually to protoplanetary disks, the cradles of planetary systems. Stellar feedback creates highly non-linear feedback loops that strongly influence the dynamical evolution across the entire cascade of scales.

We witness a paradigm shift in galactic astronomy and astrophysics. Approaches that treat the constituents of the Galaxy in equilibrium and look at the various scales in isolation reach clear limits. A comprehensive understanding of our Milky Way requires us to consider the Galaxy as one single complex ecosystem, where dramatically different environments coexist and where varying conditions are found for star and planet formation, and ultimately for life.

Exploring and understanding the Galactic ecosystem as well as the physical processes that govern its evolution define the research activities of ECOGAL. Our primary goal is to build a unifying predictive model of star and planet formation in the Milky Way.
Based on a unique combination of theoretical modeling and multi-wavelengths observations, we will
– trace the properties of planet-forming disks back to their environment in different parts of the Galaxy,
– determine the physical processes that regulate the birth to stars and determine their key parameters,
– deliver a well calibrated galaxy template which can be used to study systems in the distant Universe.

To reach these goals, ECOGAL unites four key research groups in Europe at the forefront in observational astronomy, numerical astrophysics, instrument development, and astroinformatics, whose synergy enables transformative progress in our understanding of the Galaxy.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Although new data and numerical simulations are at the very heart of our project, ECOGAL is much more than "getting better data" or "obtaining more computational power". In fact, the fundamental challenge in our field is the lack of capabilities in making sense out of the data deluge. ECOGAL creates the synergic framework through which optical-to-radio data for tens-of-thousands of molecular clouds and hundreds-of-thousands of star formation sites in the Milky Way will be analyzed back-to-back with state-of-the-art theoretical simulations of the diverse Galactic environments, linked with innovative machine-learning techniques to transform this knowhow into a set of easy-to-use tools with decision-making capabilities that are made available to the larger community.

In the time spent so far, we successfully collaborated on the various joint tasks as outlined in Section B2 of the proposal. Despite initial delays due to the global pandemic, the project is well on track as demonstrated by the large number of joint publications that range from the presentation of analytic models to the dissemination of data from large observational survey projects, or from the development of numerical or data-analysis methods to high-resolution multi-wavelength measurements.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

To go beyond the current state-of-the-art and to achieve a real breakthrough in our understanding of star and planet formation in the Milky Way and of the dynamical evolution of the interstellar medium, we need to consider all relevant physical processes simultaneously and link them across the full hierarchy of scales: from the disk of the Milky Way as a whole down to the accretion disks that give birth to individual stars and their planetary systems. At no level in this cascade of scales, time, and energy can we consider structures in equilibrium or in isolation. They are all connected by time-varying initial and boundary conditions going from large to small scales, and by various feedback loops when going the opposite direction. Consequently, all simulations discussed here require realistic initial conditions that are informed by the larger environment, and vice versa, these calculations need effective descriptions of unresolved processes on smaller scales. The same applies to the multi-frequency observations that we will pursue here. Both, large-scale Galactic surveys as well as dedicated high-resolution measurements of individual objects, have to be interpreted in their appropriate context. This is a huge challenge and requires the combination of a wide spectrum of complementary expertise and knowledge. This is the very heart of ECOGAL, uniting four European teams at the forefront of modern astronomy and astrophysics, and bringing together observations, theoretical simulations, instrumentation and data analysis.

Connection of scales in the Milky Way