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Presentation

White Dwarfs w/ Simon Blouin

Sirius A and B

abstract

At the end of its long life, after running out of nuclear fuel, our Sun will become a white dwarf. This is not an uncommon fate: more than 95% of stars in our Galaxy will become white dwarfs. In my talk, I will first explain what a white dwarf actually is. I will then discuss how those common denizens of our Galaxy are used by astronomers to perform galactic archaeological excavations, determine the composition of exoplanets, and study the behaviour of matter under extreme conditions.

bio

Simon is Banting/CITA National Fellow in astrophysics at the University of Victoria. He holds a PhD in Physics from the Université de Montréal and was previously a Director's Postdoc Fellow at Los Alamos National Lab. He his an expert in the modelling of white dwarfs.