March General Meeting
Schedule
Fri Mar 14 2025 at 07:00 pm to 08:30 pm
UTC-04:00Location
600 West Vine St., Suite 400, Kalamazoo, MI, United States, Michigan 49008 | Kalamazoo, MI
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"Stars Without Nuclear Fusion: Much of the Physics Without All of the Confusion"presented by Dr. Kirk Korista
The phenomenon of nuclear fusion influences the structure and evolution of stars in many ways, but several key physical processes in and behaviors of stars are ubiquitously misattributed to nuclear fusion. These serve as major misconceptions that lead to widespread confusion about how stars work: (1) Nuclear fusion does not support stars against the force of gravity and gravitational collapse, nor does it generate significant radiation pressure to do so. In fact, radiation pressure rarely contributes significantly to supporting stars at all. (2) Nuclear fusion is not the reason stars are hot. (3) Nuclear fusion is not the reason stars are luminous, nor does it control directly the star's luminosity.
None of this is new physics. We do not have a problem with our models; we have a major problem in how we translate them into the English language and communicate them to humans. Worse, some of the misconceptions are spreading into the peer-reviewed literature.
In point of fact, stars do not require nuclear fusion in order to exist as hot, luminous objects that are in force balance against gravity. In order to illuminate their fundamental natures, we explore stars without nuclear processes and compare their evolutionary behavior to stars with nuclear fusion.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Kirk Korista is a professor of astronomy at Western Michigan University. He received a bachelor’s degree in astronomy from the University of Illinois in 1985 and a PhD in astronomy from The Ohio State University in 1990. Kirk performed doctoral work at the Carnegie Observatories (1990-1992), Space Telescope Science Institute (1992-1994), and the University of Kentucky (1994-1997). Kirk's primary research interests are the spectroscopic analysis of active galaxies and quasars and the interpretation of these spectra through numerical (computer) simulations.
Note: You can also attend on Zoom. See our website for registration information.
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Where is it happening?
600 West Vine St., Suite 400, Kalamazoo, MI, United States, Michigan 49008Event Location & Nearby Stays:
