Listen to the Songs of the Stars: Stellar Sounds at Perimeter’s Public Lecture on May 2

02 May 2012 — 02 May 2012 Perimeter Institute

Location: Waterloo, Canada

The Pythagoreans 2500 years ago believed in a celestial “music of the spheres”, an idea that reverberated down the millennia in Western music, literature, art and science. Now, through asteroseismology – the study of the internal structure of pulsating stars – we know that there is a real music of the spheres. The stars have sounds in them that we use to see right to their very cores.

On Wednesday, May 2, as part of Perimeter Institute’s Public Lecture Series presented by Sun Life Financial, Dr. Donald Kurtz, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire, will deliver a multi-media lecture exploring the relationship of music to stellar sounds. You will hear the real sounds of the stars and you will hear musical compositions where every member of the orchestra is a real (astronomical) star! You will also learn about some of the latest discoveries from the Kepler Space Mission that lets us “hear” the stars 100 times better than with telescopes on the ground.

Donald Kurtz obtained his PhD in astronomy from the University of Texas in 1976, then spent 25 years in South Africa at the University of Cape Town. He is now Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. With over 2,000 nights at the telescope, Donald observes with some of the largest telescopes in the world and is the discoverer of a class of pulsating, magnetic stars that are the most peculiar stars known. He is a member of the steering committee of the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium, and is co-author of the fundamental textbook, “Asteroseismology”.

Donald Kurtz’s lecture, entitled “Songs of the Stars: the Real Music of the Spheres”, will be held Wednesday, May 2 at 7:00 PM ET in Waterloo, Ontario. Tickets will be available starting Monday, April 16, 2012.

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/Outreach/Public_Lectures/Public_Lectures/