Simulating Stars on Supercomputers

ABSTRACT

Astronomy is an enduring science, as vibrant today as it was 2,000 years ago when philosophers of ancient Greece like Aristarchus and Eratosthenes determined the sizes of the Earth, Moon and Sun. The exciting astronomical discoveries of today are made not only with new powerful telescopes like Keck, Hubble, and soon, SOAR, but also by a new generation of supercomputers. Computational physicists have been busy applying the known laws of physics to create computer models of virtually everything in the Universe, including the Universe itself. These numerical models are used to create a "laboratory," within which one can "experiment": change the system and observe (and predict) the effects of those changes.

In addition to the giant strides in scientific understanding, this technique of supercomputer simulations is opening up a new door for young scientists. With the aid of user-friendly, sophisticated computer codes and state-of-the-art supercomputers, undergraduates and high school students can tackle exciting new research problems that were undreamt of ten years ago. Astronomy is an ideal subject for this application, for it embodies the key elements of popularity, ease of understanding, and a large source of unsolved problems. This is particularly true today as the rapid pace of astronomical discoveries provides an unending supply of intriguing objects and problems that students can study with supercomputer simulations.

This relatively new field of computational astrophysics has revealed many new insights in the study of stars, from the internal structure of our quiet Sun, to the violent death of massive stars. This talk will review some of the current research going on in North Carolina (primarily by students of all ages) on the dynamics of stars - how they interact with each other, with neutron stars and with black holes, how they modify their surroundings, and how they die.