Joint IAS Princeton University Astrophysics Colloquium

Stars in nearly all globular clusters show complex relations among the abundances of light elements (up to Na).  Many also show anti-correlations of Mg and Al.  Until now, only one cluster (M15) conclusively showed any star-to-star variation in...

The gas-star formation-feedback "matter cycle" acts in many ways as the engine of galaxy evolution. Over the last decade, the PHANGS surveys have carried out surveys across the electromagnetic spectrum aimed at resolving galaxies into the...

Astronomers have been predicting and searching for planets beyond Neptune for almost 180 years. In all previous cases the predictions were based on bad data, bad physics, or both, and the predictions turned out to be wrong. In 2016, we joined this ...

We are living exciting times: we are now able to probe the most violent events of the Universe with diverse messengers (cosmic rays, neutrinos, photons and gravitational waves). One challenge to complete the multi-messenger picture resides in the...

For the last half-century, relativistic outflows accompanying the final collapse of massive stars have predominantly been detected via high-energy emission, as long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Yet, it has long been hypothesized that GRBs are...

The standard model of cosmology has passed every test over the last twenty years. Yet it remains unsatisfactory, with 95% of the universe being dark components, whose nature we did not understand. Now, there are possible ‘cracks’ in the model, as...

Most of the power from an Active Galactic Nucleus is released close to the black hole, and thus studying accretion at event horizon scales—at the intersection of inflow and outflow—is essential for understanding how much matter accretes and grows...

JWST has enabled high-fidelity infrared spectroscopy for a wide range of transiting planets, directly imaged planets, and brown dwarfs.  In the past year, for transiting planets, observers have detected several molecules for the first time in an...

We find ourselves at a pivotal era in the study of cosmology and galaxy formation. The dark energy + cold dark matter (ΛCDM) paradigm is firmly established as the default cosmological model, owing in large part to its incredible success in...

Star clusters are a key product of star formation. They trace the densest peaks of the star formation hierarchy, and as (effectively) single-age populations, they have great utility as “clocks” for timing various phases of the star formation cycle...