Stainton, P (2025) The Impact of Early Environmental Conditions on the Evolution of Solar Type Stars As Seen In Cosmological Zoom-In Simulations of Milky Way Type Galaxies. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool John Moores University.

Preview

Text 2025Staintonphd.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

The Sun is the only star known to host life, but, as of yet, there has been no clear reason as to why that should be the case. There are many other stars like the Sun, and exoplanet research has shown that there are thousands of other stars that host planets. The environmental condition of these planets, however, may be far less conducive to life than those found on Earth. To establish if this is the case, it is important to understand the early environmental conditions that the planet, and therefore host star, formed and evolved in. Therefore, this research aims to quantify the impact of the cosmic environment on the formation and evolution on stars and their associated planets over cosmic time. Due to computational limitations, it is not currently possible to resolve individual stars or planet systems in cosmological simulations. Therefore, the stellar clusters found in these simulations must serve as proxies. This study utilizes Empirically Motivated Physics (EMP) simulations to investigate the relationship between particle metallicity and variables that may have impacted the formation and evolution of stars and planets.
Repeated trends are observed between particle metallicity and measured variables, suggesting that metallicity, often associated with regions of higher stellar density, plays a significant role in shaping the evolutionary history of stellar particles and, by extension, stars and their planets. We discuss each of these in detail and aim to determine how significant each of these may have been in determining the habitability of planets.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Simulation; Galaxy Formation
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
SWORD Depositor:	A Symplectic
Date Deposited:	04 Feb 2025 10:51
Last Modified:	04 Feb 2025 10:51
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/LJMU.t.00025397
Supervisors:	Longmore, S and Moore, T
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/25397

View Item