Starquakes Expose Stellar Heartbeats
Oxford Physics Public Lectures - A podcast by Oxford University
Categories:
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.
