Star Births, Sun Fakes & Galaxy Heartbreaks

Using modern simulations Megan outlines how stars are born and the paths they take as they spread out into the galaxy. How do young stars interact with each other? How does this affect how planets are made? Explore new insights into where our stars have come from, and how planets like ours come to be.

The Sun is the only star we can explore in the greatest detail! While we cannot bottle the Sun, one step is to build mini simulated Suns! Using modern computational facilities and advanced models, we try to recreate the extreme conditions of the Sun to study its dynamics, including sunspots, solar tornado storms, and big solar explosions. In this talk, we will explore how cutting-edge experiments bring us closer to unlocking the Sun’s secrets, one simulation at a time.

Supermassive black holes billions of times heavier than our Sun sit in the centres of galaxies throughout the Universe. Most are silent, but some are the engines that power quasars - compact regions in the centre of the galaxy that can be more powerful than hundreds of billions of stars combined. Dustin will discuss his research into these massive blackholes and how they end up killing galaxies.