[AstroTours] Live Fast, Die Young: The first stars and their lasting impact on our Universe

Please note that this event is not run by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - Toronto Centre. Please contact the organizers for more information.

Join us at the April AstroTour! The event is FREE and open to all. NO PRIOR REGISTRATION REQUIRED!! Our April AstroTour features UofT PhD Student Sam Berek's talk about the first stars, followed by exciting astronomy demos and telescope tours!

Talk Abstract: 

Today, our universe consists of trillions of galaxies, each of which contains billions of stars and planets just like our own Solar System. But how did it come to be this way? In this talk, we will travel 13.7 billion years into the past, when the universe was just a dense soup of particles. As it began to expand and cool, something incredible happened: clumps of gas collapsed into the first stars, which lit up the universe. These first stars were far bigger and hotter than our Sun. They burned through their fuel thousands of times faster, and ended their lives in some of the biggest explosions in the history of the universe. I will dive into our theories on this first population of stars, including how their deaths left remnants that became the material for the objects that now populate our universe. Finally, I will show how we may soon be able to observe these stars for the first time with the James Webb Space Telescope.

About the Speaker: 

Sam Berek (she/her) is a 5th year graduate student in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and a fellow of the Data Sciences Institute. Her research focuses on characterizing star formation in the early universe. She uses both nearby, old stellar populations as probes of earlier times, as well as direct observations of some of the first galaxies in the universe. Her research is in the interdisciplinary field of astrostatistics, and she develops novel statistical methodologies to analyze data. Originally from New Jersey, Sam completed her undergraduate degree in astrophysics and anthropology at Yale University. In her free time, you can usually find her in the middle of a long cooking project.

Website URL: https://uoft.me/astrotours

Organized by: AstroTours at the University of Toronto

Location: McLennan Physical Laboratories, MP102

Date and Time: Thursday April 3rd, 2025. 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT.

McLennan Physical Laboratories, 60 St George St., Toronto ON M5S 1A7

Demos and telescope tours: 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM EDT.