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Hearing the Stars:

New Insights into Stellar Interiors

Space-based observations from the Kepler satellite have provided a remarkable new tool for studying stars. Simply by measuring how bright a star is over many years, we can now directly measure its mass, radius, rate of rotation, and sometimes, the magnetic field it possesses. This has now been done for tens of thousands of stars across the Milky Way, also allowing us to identify those few stars that are in short-lived phases of their evolution. It’s a great story of how theory and observation, together, can make a remarkable impact on our understanding of the universe.

Lars Bildsten is the Director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) and the Gluck Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell University in 1991, where he held a Fannie and John Hertz Graduate Fellowship. Dr. Bildsten is a theoretical astrophysicist recognized for his work on the properties and behaviors of stars, both when they are burning their thermonuclear fuel for billions of years and when they explode as supernovae or emit gravitational waves. He was at Caltech for three years as the Lee A. DuBridge Research Fellow in Theoretical Astrophysics and was an assistant and associate professor in both the Physics and Astronomy departments at University of California, Berkeley. Moving to Santa Barbara in 1999 as a Permanent Member at the KITP, he held the Rosing, Raab Chair in Theoretical Astrophysics prior to becoming Director in 2012. Among his awards are the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Cottrell Scholar of the Research Corporation, the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the American Astronomical Society and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. He is presently Chair of the Board of Directors of both the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Las Cumbres Observatory.

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The Last Stargazers

A bird that mimicked a black hole. The astronomer that discovered microwave ovens. A telescope that got shot. The science of astronomy is filled with true stories (and tall tales) of the adventures and misadventures that accompany our exploration of the universe. Join Dr. Emily Levesque, author of the new popular science book The Last Stargazers, to take a behind-the-scenes tour of life as a professional astronomer. We’ll learn about some of the most powerful telescopes in the world, meet the people who run them, and explore the crucial role of human curiosity in the past, present, and future of scientific discovery.

Emily Levesque is an astronomy professor at the University of Washington. Her work explores how the most massive stars in the universe evolve and die. She has observed for upwards of fifty nights on many of the planet’s largest telescopes and flown over the Antarctic stratosphere in an experimental aircraft for her research. Her academic accolades include the 2014 Annie Jump Cannon Award, a 2017 Alfred P. Sloan fellowship, a 2019 Cottrell Scholar award, and the 2020 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize. She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from MIT and a PhD in astronomy from the University of Hawaii.

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What will astronomy be like in 2121?

Astronomy texts of 2121 will be filled with answers to questions we haven’t thought to ask in 2021. I say this based on how unpredictably our cosmic view has changed in the past century. How did Canadian astronomer John Stanley Plaskett see the Universe in 1921 when his namesake telescope saw its first light? How might he have answered the question “What will astronomy be like in 2021?” In 1921, the Milky Way was the entire Universe, and almost all astronomers were sure we were near its centre. In 1921, the most sensitive thing at the focus of a telescope was photographic emulsion on a piece of glass, and the only light recorded was what we see by eye, a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. The first radio telescope was more one decade away. People dreamt of space travel but no one included a telescope in those dreams. So space telescopes weren’t yet even a fantasy. In 1921 (and for the next five decades), the recipe of the Universe was simple. Everything was made of atoms, made of particles of ordinary matter. There was one type of matter, so nobody said “ordinary matter”, just “matter”. No one in 1921 had predicted, or even imagined, dark matter and dark energy. No one in 1921 predicted the expansion of the Universe. Well, Einstein did, or his Theory of General Relativity had. But Einstein thought it was a flaw in his theory. Einstein predicted black holes in 1916 but they weren’t named that until 1967 and the first wasn’t found until 1971. He predicted gravitational waves in 1916; it was a century before that prediction was confirmed. Fast forward to 2021, as I try to forecast the state of astronomy in 2121. Like Plaskett, there are advances I can confidently predict. We’ll know the nature of dark matter, maybe within a decade. Gravitational wave detectors will see things so distant we couldn’t study them in any other way. We’ll have mapped stars across our Galaxy. Our sample of planets around those stars will grow from a few thousand today to maybe a few million in 2121. And we’ll have evidence of aliens – maybe only microbes, but alien microbes nonetheless. The biggest breakthroughs will be the ones no one sees coming. Whenever we look at the Universe with new eyes (telescopes and instruments), new insights (analyses powered by new computers and young minds) or new perspectives, we are always caught off guard. I hope to catch you a bit off guard with my look back across a century of astronomical history and with my speculative look forward across the next century of discovery

Jaymie Matthews calls himself an astrophysical “gossip columnist” who unveils the hidden lifestyles of stars by eavesdropping on “the music of the spheres.” His version of interstellar Spotify is Canada’s first space telescope, MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars), which detects vibrations in the light of ringing stars too subtle to be seen by the largest telescopes on Earth. MOST also makes Professor Matthews an “astro-paparazzo” by helping him spy on planets around other stars that might be homes for alien celebrities. Celebrities? Maybe not Wookies, but finding microbes on another world would qualify those microbes as newsmakers of the century. Matthews is a Professor of Astrophysics in University of British Columbia’s Department of Physics & Astronomy. Prof. Matthews is an expert in the fields of stellar seismology (literally using the surface vibrations of vibrating stars to probe their hidden interiors and histories) and exoplanetary science. He’s a member of the Executive Council for NASA’s Kepler satellite mission hunting for Earth-sized exoplanets in the Habitable Zones of their stars. He serves on the Science Team for BRITE Constellation (BRIght Target Explorer) – a Canadian–Austrian–Polish satellite mission monitoring the brightest stars in the night sky. He’s an Associate Editor of the astronomy journal Frontiers, and an author on more than 200 refereed scientific papers. In 2006, Prof. Matthews was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, and in 2012, he received a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Astronomy education and public outreach are important facets of Matthews’ life and career. He’s UBC’s astronomy undergraduate advisor. He served on the Board of Directors of Vancouver’s H.R. MacMillan Space Centre for almost 20 years, and on the Board of Youth Science Canada. In 2015, he received the Canada-Wide Science Fair Alumni Award. He was awarded a 1999 Killam Prize for teaching excellence in the UBC Faculty of Science, and the 2002 Teaching Prize of the Canadian Association of Physicists. In 2016, Dr. Matthews was awarded the Canadian Astronomy Society’s Qilak Award for his efforts in astronomy education and public outreach. Qilak is the Inuit word for the “canopy of the heavens” or the sky overhead. Matthews is a co-founder of and regular instructor in UBC’s Science 101 course for residents of Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, and a mentor for Canada’s Loran Scholar programme. He was a storyteller at the Kootenay Storytelling Festival in Nelson, BC in 2013. Last year, Dr. Matthews provided astronomical context on stage for a sold-out concert by the UBC Symphony Orchestra of Holst’s The Planets.

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