Sounding the Stars with Genetic Algorithms

Google Tech Talks
January 13, 2009

ABSTRACT

In February 2009 NASA will launch the Kepler satellite, a mission designed to discover habitable Earth-like planets around distant Sun-like stars. The method that Kepler will use to detect distant worlds will only reveal the size of the planet relative to the size of the host star, so part of the mission is devoted to characterizing distant Suns using a technique known as "asteroseismology". I have developed an automated approach to matching computer models of stars to such observations, based primarily on a parallel genetic algorithm. I will give a broad overview of how we can probe the insides of stars using seismology, and I will provide a general background on the operation of our model-fitting application. I will conclude with our first results on a nearby star: the Sun.

Speaker: Travis Metcalfe
Travis Metcalfe is an astronomer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He started his career in the backyard of his childhood home in rural Oregon, and continued it in such places as Tucson, Austin, and Boston before landing in Boulder four years ago.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[pdxyota]

I'm extremely excited by this discovery, and on a side note Travis YOU have a great manner of delivering fairly complicated information to a broad audience.

[Provoost]

Thanks for a clear introduction into asteroseismology. It brought up good memories from an astrophysics and unrelated computational seismology course course that I followed some time ago. Now I know how they are related...

Also thanks for introducing (at the end) the Pale Blue Dot project. Maybe I'll adopt a star...

[michalchik]

No problem, your answer actually helped, because I went and looked up Googleplex.

[moseskiiza]

i apologize. i misunderstood your question

[michalchik]

I meant what city

[moseskiiza]

you're crazy, i find it hard to concentrate on one video, let alone four!

[moseskiiza]

in google (googleplex), they have a sort of campus where they invite brains to speak. excellent source of education/inspiration

[ouijaboy666]

i have four monitors and i can watch four different videos at once. Its supposed to be impossible to concentrate on more than one at a time, but believe me you can train yourself to do it. I'm trying to get it up to 10 but so far i got up to 6 for about 2 mins then i lost it.

[michalchik]

Where are these tech talks held?

[ncarucar]

So glad this GoogleTechTalk on Travis Metcalfe's adventurous interdisciplinary astronomy is available. We asked Travis to talk a bit about his scientific interests and how he got started on his research career. You'll find that interview in the "People Spotlights" on UCAR's website. We've also started a new NCAR + UCAR Science channel on YouTube (ncarucar). Let us know what you think.