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Sounds of the Stars:

Journey to the Center of a Star

What lies at the center of a star? A stellar core is surrounded by a million Earth’s worth of plasma, so we cannot see it directly. However, the immense power of a star’s radiation causes nearly all stars to pulsate, creating “star quakes” at their surfaces. These oscillations are a collection of musical notes that uniquely define each star and are determined by its internal structure, just as the sound of a musical instrument is determined by its size and shape. Join me for a cosmic symphony as we journey to the center of the Sun, Saturn, white dwarfs, red giants, and heartbeat stars.

Jim Fuller is a professor of theoretical astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology. His research covers a broad array of topics, ranging from Saturn’s moons to massive stars that explode as supernovae or collapse into black holes! Recently he has been studying the evolution of massive stars just before supernova, the neutron stars and black holes that they produce, asteroseismology and magnetic fields inside of red giants, pulsations of tidally distorted stars, the deep interior of Saturn as revealed by its rings, and the long-term orbital evolution of exoplanets and moons.

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