1 of this week's questions comes from the article "The Gem of the General Relativity" handed out in class Monday; the second and third are from the reading on our Galaxy's structure and evolution for Friday (Chapter 14 sections 3 & 5, Chapter 20, sections 1-3)

1. This question was originally going to be (after you read the article on the binary pulsar mentioned above), "have we detected gravity waves?"  However, on second thought, a better question is "explain why the answer to that question is both yes and no."
 

 2. In order to simplify talking about our Galaxy, sometimes we think of it as having a two-part structure: halo and disk.  What are the differences between these two populations in terms of average age, type of orbit around the galactic center, metal content, spatial distribution, and angular speed (of rotation about the galactic center)?

  3.  Now what if we find a galaxy that *doesn't* have this 2-part structure.... In other words, suppose we find a galaxy that looks exactly like our galaxy's halo.   No disk, no variation in age or metal content or in orbit type.  What determines whether a galaxy goes down the road (evolutionarily speaking) that our galaxy did or down this other road?