Abstract: Galaxies often throw out gas in a violent manner. These powerful ‘galactic winds’ are detected in different wavebands, from radio to optical to X-rays. This phenomenon is intimately connected to a regulatory process by which stars form in galaxies. In the absence of these outflows, stars would have formed in galaxies more abundantly, which would have quickly depleted the gas reserve in the universe, and the universe would have become full of passive and dim galaxies by now. I will talk about how observations, theoretical calculations and simulations have helped us to understand the gaseous outflows, and in turn, how galaxies evolve.

Bio: Prof. Biman Nath is a professor of Astrophysics and Astronomy at Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bangalore. He has done his MS/PhD in Astronomy from the University of Maryland, and Postdoctoral work at Max Planck Institute in Bonn and in IUCAA Pune. He has been in the Raman Research Institute since 1997. He received the Indira Gandhi Award for science popularization from INSA in 2011. His current research interests involve diffuse gas in the universe (intracluster and intergalactic medium) and interaction between galaxies and diffuse gas.