Prof. Adi Nusser Technion Date: Nov. 7, 2010 Title: Towards a better theory for structure formation Abstract: The standard cosmological paradigm for structure formation has been very successful at describing the large scale distribution of matter in the Universe. This is most directly confirmed by the excellent agreement between the large peculiar motions ( deviations from a pure Hubble flow) of galaxies and the fluctuations in the gravitational force field. Nevertheless, the paradigm is less successful at describing phenomena on small scales. The enhanced emptiness of low density regions and the ubiquity of pure disk galaxies are just two examples for such phenomena. All these issues and a possible refinement of the standard paradigm will be addressed.