Starquakes Expose Stellar Heartbeats

The 14th Hintze Biannual Lecture 4th May 2017 delivered by Professor Conny Aerts - Director, Institute of Astronomy KU Leuven Thanks to the recent space missions CoRoT and Kepler, a new era of stellar physics has dawned. Asteroseismology, the observation and interpretation of starquakes, has produced a number of surprises about the deep interiors of stars. These results have altered our view of the lifecycle of stars including the generations of stars that preceded the Sun. Starquakes allow us to estimate the distances and ages of stars with unprecedented precision. Asteroseismology from space has revealed radically different physics in the heart of massive stars compared to the Sun. These massive stars are the chemical factories of the Universe, forcing us to rethink the output from the manufacturing sector of our Galaxy. Furthermore asteroseismology has paved the way for archaeological studies of our own Milky Way. After reviewing these developments I will look to the future projects that can address the new open questions posed by starquakes.

Om Podcasten

The Department of Physics public lecture series. An exciting series of lectures about the research at Oxford Physics take place throughout the academic year. Looking at topics diverse as the creation of the universe to the science of climate change. Features episodes previously published as: (1) 'Oxford Physics Alumni': "Informal interviews with physics alumni at events, lectures and other alumni related activities." (2) 'Physics and Philosophy: Arguments, Experiments and a Few Things in Between': "A series which explores some of the links between physics and philosophy, two of the most fundamental ways with which we try to answer our questions about the world around us. A number of the most pertinent topics which bridge the disciplines are discussed - the nature of space and time, the unpredictable results of quantum mechanics and their surprising consequences and perhaps most fundamentally, the nature of the mind and how far science can go towards explaining and understanding it. Featuring interviews with Dr. Christopher Palmer, Prof. Frank Arntzenius, Prof. Vlatko Vedral, Dr. David Wallace and Prof. Roger Penrose."