Biography of a star
Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 10:01
in Astronomy & Space
Nuclear fusion is a virtually inexhaustible source of energy, and for decades now scientists have been working on exploiting it. A process that continues to present difficulties in laboratories on Earth has been running smoothly in stars like our own Sun for billions of years. But how do the stars work? How are they born? How do they die? Achim Weiss at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching tracks the life cycle of the cosmic plasma spheres - not with a telescope, but by using computer model calculations.