There’ll be plenty of talk about stars next week at Western as the Bright Emissaries Conference will bring together a preeminent group of 70 astrophysicists from six continents to share their most current research related to all observational and theoretical aspects of B-emission Stars.
Thirty-four talks, six keynote presentations and two poster sessions daily will be delivered over the Aug. 11-13 conference.
These stars in question are 10 times more massive than the sun and emit between 100-10,000 times its energy. Most importantly, they spin at very high rates of rotation and as such, material is launched from the stellar surface to form disks. Disks are ubiquitous in the universe, with the disks of spiral galaxies – such as our Milky Way – being prominent examples.
Understanding the effect of the rate of rotation of a disk on its dynamics may ultimately provide a clearer picture of stellar evolution or, in short, how Earth came to be.