Colloquium: Guy Davies (Birmingham)

Asteroseismology and inferring stellar ages

The true ages of stars would be useful in lots of contexts, for example gyrochronology, exoplanet studies, and galactic archeology.   But stars do not divulge their ages willingly.  Asteroseismology can give us a unique perspective on stellar ages by probing the interior structure of a star but this does not reveal stellar age in itself.  Stellar ages, for all stars but the Sun, require some kind of model in order to infer age.  In this talk I will introduce asteroseismology of solar-type pulsators as a tool for studying stars.  I will discuss some of the successes and limitations of the current methodology for inferring ages using asteroseismology.  And then I will present our ongoing work to address and overcome limitations.  Much of this ongoing work focuses on the construction and execution of large multi-level models (Hierarchical Bayesian Models) and I hope to demonstrate the utility, and potential to scale, of these models as a common place method of the future.

• Date:
  Oct. 29, 2020, 2:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
  
  
• Location:

  Virtual Meeting, BBB

  
  
• Contact:
  Sydney Barnes