Stony Brook University
7:30 pm
ESS Building, Room 001
Friday, Dec 05, 2025
Double, double toil and trouble; nuclear fire burn and cosmic cauldron bubble
Prof. Alan Caldar
Nuclear astrophysics is the study of nuclear reactions, astrophysical objects and events powered by nuclear reactions, the origin and evolution of chemical elements, and matter under extreme conditions. Understanding these mostly experimentally inaccessible phenomena requires studying the basic physics and constructing models to simulate the events, often requiring the most powerful computers available.
In the next of the popular Astronomy Open Night series, Prof. Alan Calder will discuss his research in nuclear astrophysics. He will describe some of the events he and his students and colleagues have modeled along with the multi-physics, multi-scale computer simulation codes they use.
Prof. Calder joined the Stony Brook Physics and Astronomy department in 2007 after research appointments at the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago. His research is in numerically modeling astrophysical phenomena, and he has studied core collapse and thermonuclear supernovae, coalescing neutron stars, and classical novae. He has also worked on the problem of validation with laboratory astrophysics experiments.
