| when: | Friday, try April 17, 2015 7:15 pm |
| where: | The FORUM at Moorpark College, 7075 Campus Road |
| what: | Abstract: Billions of years in the future, our Sun will eventually run out of all of its fuel and will turn into an extraordinarily dense, Earth-sized star known as a white dwarf. Most white dwarfs, including our future Sun, slowly fade into oblivion, but if they can steal matter from another nearby star, they can rejuvenate themselves. Many such “new stars”, or “novae” have been observed over the course of history. Some are due to periodic increases of in falling matter from instabilities in the accretion flow, some are due to thermonuclear explosions on the white dwarf, and some are due to thermonuclear explosions of the entire white dwarf itself! I will discuss all three classes, including some recent work that we believe resolves a problem in our understanding of the first class. Observations and modelling of all these systems can shed light on the physics of planet formation. They have historically confused us as to the size of the universe, and more recently, have revealed that 70% of the “stuff” that makes up the universe is some form of mysterious “dark energy”. Bio: Dr. Blaes has an international education, with a B.Sc. from Queen Mary College, University of London; and M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy. Before landing his faculty job at UCSB, he did postdocs at the California Institute of Technology and at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. He has published 76 referred articles, and advised six Ph.D. theses. The public is invited to attend and learn the enjoyment of amateur astronomy with these educational and enjoyable speakers. |