Beyond Law and Order: Detecting State Violence and the Search for Justice in Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star

Violent political unrest and militarised regime change was endemic to Latin America in the 1960s and 70s. As a result, writers working within the genre of detective fiction produced work influenced by the socially critical and cynical attitude of American hardboiled fiction. Known as neopoliciaco fiction, this work responded to circumstances where violence was perpetrated and authorised by governments against their own citizens in the name of political and social stability. Bolaño's unique adaption of crime fiction in Distant Star combines neopoliciaco crime writing with the testimonio, a genre which resists dominant narratives of history that downplay and even actively deny the criminality of state actors. In Distant Star, Bolaño explores how detective work functions within a paradigm beyond that of law and order, and the implications this has for the pursuit of reconciliation and justice in post-regime Chile.

Molecular gas in distant brightest cluster galaxies

The mechanisms governing the stellar mass assembly and star formation history of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) are still being debated. By means of new and archival molecular gas observations we investigate the role of dense megaparsec-scale environments in regulating the fueling of star formation in distant BCGs, through cosmic time. We observed in CO with the IRAM 30 m telescope two star-forming BCGs belonging to SpARCS clusters, namely, 3C 244.1 (z = 0.4) and SDSS J161112.65+550823.5 (z = 0.9), and compared their molecular gas and star formation properties with those of a compilation of ∼100 distant cluster galaxies from the literature, including nine additional distant BCGs at z ∼ 0.4 − 3.5. We set robust upper limits of MH2 < 1.0 × 1010 M⊙ and < 2.8 × 1010 M⊙ to their molecular gas content, respectively, and to the ratio of molecular gas to stellar mass M(H2)/M⋆ ≲ 0.2 and depletion time τdep ≲ 40 Myr of the two targeted BCGs. They are thus among the distant cluster galaxies with the lowest gas fractions and shortest depletion times. The majority (64%±15% and 73%±18%) of the 11 BCGs with observations in CO have lower M(H2)/M⋆ values and τdep, respectively, than those estimated for main sequence galaxies. Statistical analysis also tentatively suggests that the values of M(H2)/M⋆ and τdep for the 11 BCGs deviates, with a significance of ∼2σ, from those of the comparison sample of cluster galaxies. A morphological analysis for a subsample of seven BCGs with archival HST observations reveals that 71%±17% of the BCGs are compact or show star-forming components or substructures. Our results suggest a scenario where distant star-forming BCGs assemble a significant fraction ∼16% of their stellar mass on the relatively short timescale ∼τdep, while environmental mechanisms might prevent the replenishment of gas feeding the star formation. We speculate that compact components also favor the rapid exhaustion of molecular gas and ultimately help to quench the BCGs. Distant star-forming BCGs are excellent targets for ALMA and for next-generation telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

Discovery of the most distant star-forming and quenched galaxies in the universe

While the high-redshift component of the CANDELS survey was designed with the z ∼ 6–8 era in mind, these data do probe the far-UV of galaxies at even higher redshift. A few studies have ventured this far out, and have published conflicting results - some continue to find significant star-formation, while others conclude there is a steep decline in this quantity. Here I report on a new search for z = 9–10 galaxies, making significant use of the Spitzer/IRAC data in the CANDELS fields. We have discovered a larger number of galaxies in this epoch than previous works, implying the UV luminosity function, and thus the SFR density, may not evolve as steeply as previously thought. This implies that star-formation begins early in the universe. I will also report on a new study searching for the earliest quenched galaxies at 3 < z < 5, which are not predicted by models, yet may exist if galaxies form very early, and thus can approach their quenching phase quicker.

Observations and the universe

The first detailed and extensive studies of nebulae were made by William and Caroline Herschel in the late eighteenth century. These researches led to wide-ranging debates on the nature of these objects: are they truly clouds of nebulous material or are they perhaps distant star systems? By the end of the nineteenth century, astronomers generally agreed that nebulae are either within or closely linked to our own stellar system, and that no galaxies beyond our own Galaxy had been sighted, even in the largest telescopes. But early in the twentieth century, astronomers managed to fashion novel ways to determine the distances to a class of nebulae known as spiral nebulae. With the aid of these distance indicators, the spiral nebulae were transformed into galaxies of stars. Modern extragalactic cosmology thereby came into being in the first few decades of the twentieth century.