Predicting the evolution and fate of massive stars in 1 and 3D

by Prof. Raphael Hirschi (Keele Uni, UK)

Wednesday 11 Feb 2026, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Stockholm

FC61 (AlbaNova Main Building)

In this colloquium, I will start by briefly reviewing the importance of stars in the Universe. I will then discuss how we can re-create stars on computers using a range of simulations using a few hours on a laptop to months on supercomputers. I will explain how these simulations help us understand and predict the structure, fate and impact of massive stars. In particular, I will present recent work studying how mass and rotation affect their fate across cosmic times and compare the predicted black-hole mass distribution to the latest gravitational waves detections from the LKV collaboration. I will then introduce the 321D (3 to 1-dimension) loop, a framework to improve 1D stellar evolution models using very detailed 3D hydrodynamic simulations.