Light on Dark Matter

Galaxies are lighthouses that sit atop peaks in the density field. There is good observational evidence that these lighthouses do not provide a uniform description of the distribution of dark matter.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Paper presented at workshop `Structure and Dynamics in the Local Universe' 24-26 November, 2003, Sydney, Australi

The Local Void is Really Empty

Are voids in the distribution of galaxies only places with reduced matter density and low star formation efficiency or are they empty of matter? There is now compelling evidence of expansion away from the Local Void at very high velocities. The motion is most reasonably interpreted as an evacuation of the void, which requires that the void be very large and very empty.Comment: Proceedings IAU Symp. 244: Dark Galaxies and Lost Baryons. Cardiff, 25-29 June, 2007. 6 pages, 5 figure

The faint end of the galaxy luminosity function

We present and discuss optical measurements of the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function down to M_R = -10 in five different local environments of varying galaxy density and morphological content. The environments we studied, in order of decreasing galaxy density, are the Virgo Cluster, the NGC 1407 Group, the Coma I Group, the Leo Group and the NGC 1023 Group. Our results come from a deep wide-angle survey with the NAOJ Subaru 8 m Telescope on Mauna Kea and are sensitive down to very faint surface-brightness levels. Galaxies were identified as group or cluster members on the basis of their surface brightness and morphology. The faintest galaxies in our sample have R ~ 22.5. There were thousands of fainter galaxies but we cannot distinguish cluster members from background galaxies at these faint limits so do not attempt to determine a luminosity function fainter than M_R = -10. In all cases, there are far fewer dwarfs than the numbers of low mass halos anticipated by cold dark matter theory. The mean logarithmic slope of the luminosity function between M_R = -18 and M_R = -10 is alpha ~ -1.2, far shallower than the cold dark matter mass function slope of alpha ~ -1.8. We would therefore need to be missing about 90 per cent of the dwarfs at the faint end of our sample in all the environments we study to achieve consistency with CDM theory.Comment: 23 pages, 26 figs, MNRAS in pres

Depression and the Problem of Absent Desires

I argue that consideration of certain cases of severe depression reveals a problem for desire-based theories of welfare. I first show that depression can result in a person losing her desires and then identify a case wherein it seems right to think that, as a result of very severe depression, the individuals described no longer have any desires whatsoever. I argue that the state these people are in is a state of profound ill-being: their lives are going very poorly for them. Yet desire theories get this case wrong. Because no desires are being frustrated, the desire theorist has no grounds for ascribing ill-being; indeed, because the individuals described seem utterly without desire, the desire theorist has no grounds for treating these people as subjects of welfare ascription at all. I argue that these results are unacceptable; therefore, we should reject desire-based theories of well-being and ill-being

Environmental Dependencies in the Luminosity Function of Galaxies

The evidence is becoming strong that the luminosity function of galaxies varies with environment. Higher density, more dynamically evolved regions appear to have more dwarfs per giant. The situation is becoming clearer as a result of wide field imaging surveys with the Canada-France-Hawaii and Subaru telescopes and spectroscopy of faint dwarfs with the Keck telescope. We report here on extensive observations of the small but dense NGC 5846 Group. The faint end of the luminosity function rises relatively steeply in this case.Comment: Proceedings IAU Colloq. 198 "Near-Field Cosmology with Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies" 6 pages, 4 figure