StarTalk Radio Cosmic Queries – Starquakes with Conny Aerts
May 8, 2026
Conny Aerts, a leading astrophysicist and asteroseismology expert at KU Leuven and Radboud University, explains how stars “ring” like bells to reveal their inner lives. She covers starquakes versus earthquakes, sonifying stellar oscillations into sound, what drives and measures oscillations, and how long-baseline missions tease out hidden rotation and stellar structure.
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Stars Act Like Musical Concert Halls
- Asteroseismology uses stellar brightness variations as 'sound' to probe a star's interior.
- Conny Aerts likens stars to 3D concert halls whose pressure waves change surface brightness, revealing internal structure and composition.
Use Sonification To Hear Stellar Spectra
- Sonify stellar oscillation data by shifting frequencies into the audible range to explore patterns and include blind researchers.
- Aerts emphasizes sonification enables people to 'hear' each star's unique symphony and participate in analysis.
You Need Long Baselines For Accurate Frequencies
- Long, continuous light curves are essential because frequency precision scales as the inverse of observation time.
- Aerts praises Kepler/TESS/PLATO for multi-year monitoring; James Webb is unsuitable for long-baseline asteroseismology.