SPEAKER: Fernando Buitrago (OAL)
ABSTRACT: The most massive galaxies (M_stellar > 10^11 M_Sun) have attracted lots of attention in the last years because of the huge transformations they undergo from high redshift to the present day Universe. Surprisingly, they are in place already at z = 2-3, and their observational properties (tiny sizes, disk-like morphologies, huge star formation rates) are at variance with what we see in our galactic neighbourhood, the huge early-type galaxies that dominate galaxy groups and clusters. In this talk, I will answer what Physics we can learn from these objects, I will review the state-of-the-art knowledge about them and I will finalize by clarifying whether they may pose a challenge to our current paradigm of galaxy formation and evolution, LambdaCDM.