Nature versus nurture in galaxy formation: the effect of environment on star formation with causal machine learning
星系形成中的先天与后天因素：用因果机器学习研究环境对恒星形成的影响AI 解读 ↓
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AI 根据所提供的论文材料归类：摘要明确使用因果模型与因果推断方法估计环境对恒星形成率的效应。
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星系形成中的先天与后天因素：用因果机器学习研究环境对恒星形成的影响
- 研究问题
- 星系形成与演化中，外部环境如何因果影响恒星形成率，又如何与内部过程及动态反馈造成的关联区分？
- 方法与思路
- 作者为 IllustrisTNG 模拟构建因果模型，并引入流行病学方法，估计不同环境及宇宙时期的恒星形成率效应。
- 材料陈述的贡献
- 摘要称环境在当前时期抑制恒星形成、早期则促进形成，并指出忽略内部过程或控制单时点恒星质量会影响估计。
- 阅读关注点
- 应核对动态因果模型、内部过程的代理方式、恒星质量的控制时点，以及模拟数据中因果效应的识别依据。
- 阅读边界
- 这是 arXiv 预印本，同行评审及期刊接收未核实；结论来自模拟，摘要未说明识别条件及对真实星系的适用范围。
原文摘要
Understanding how galaxies form and evolve is at the heart of modern astronomy. With the advent of large-scale surveys and simulations, remarkable progress has been made in the last few decades. Despite this, the physical processes behind the phenomena, and particularly their importance, remain far from known, as correlations have primarily been established rather than the underlying causality. We address this challenge by applying the causal inference framework. Specifically, we tackle the fundamental open question of whether galaxy formation and evolution depends more on nature (i.e., internal processes) or nurture (i.e., external processes), by estimating the causal effect of environment on star-formation rate in the IllustrisTNG simulations. To do so, we develop a comprehensive causal model and employ cutting-edge techniques from epidemiology to overcome the long-standing problem of disentangling nature and nurture. We find that the causal effect is negative and substantial, with environment suppressing the SFR by a maximal factor of $\sim100$. While the overall effect at $z=0$ is negative, in the early universe, environment is discovered to have a positive impact, boosting star formation by a factor of $\sim10$ at $z\sim1$ and by even greater amounts at higher redshifts. Furthermore, we show that: (i) nature also plays an important role, as ignoring it underestimates the causal effect in intermediate-density environments by a factor of $\sim2$, (ii) controlling for the stellar mass at a snapshot in time, as is common in the literature, is not only insufficient to disentangle nature and nurture but actually has an adverse effect, though (iii) stellar mass is an adequate proxy of the effects of nature. Finally, this work may prove a useful blueprint for extracting causal insights in other fields that deal with dynamical systems with closed feedback loops, such as the Earth's climate.