Colloquium by Joel Ong, Univ of Hawaii
The field of asteroseismology has grown explosively in the past two decades. It has evolved from niche examinations of individual variable stars, to now having become a broadly applicable tool for large-scale stellar characterization; it also remains our sole observational probe into the astrophysics of their interiors. I will lay out recent developments in its observational methods and discoveries, particularly from NASA's highly successful Kepler space photometry mission. This recent history repeatedly demonstrates that the development of analytic theory, and of computational technique, is often the rate-determining bottleneck in our ability to derive and refine astrophysical interpretation from observational data. Substantially more rapid advances in theory and technique will thus be essential if we are to keep pace with the ongoing data deluge from NASA's TESS mission --- which will only intensify with the imminent launches of NASA's Roman and ESA's PLATO satellites. Finally, I will outline some remaining lacunae in our understanding of stellar astrophysics, which we hope eventually to fill by way of this new flood of observational seismology.
Followed by wine and cheese.
Host: Kathryn Johnston