The Milky Way did not form in isolation, but is the product of a complex evolution of generations of mergers, collapses, star formation, supernovae and collisional heating, radiative and collisional cooling, and ejected nucleosynthesis. Moreover, all of this occurs in the context of the cosmic expansion, the formation of cosmic filaments, dark-matter haloes, spiral density waves, and emerging dark energy. This paper summarizes a review of recent attempts to reconstruct this complex evolution. |
