Special TAPIR Seminar

Although they are rare and short-lived, massive stars play a major role in Universe. With their large luminosities, strong stellar winds and spectacular explosions they act as cosmic engines, heating and enriching their surroundings, where the next generation of stars and their planets are forming. For this reason, stellar models are applied in a wide variety of astrophysical problems.

I will discuss recent developments in the massive star community triggered by observing surveys and advances in the models that are questioning the validity of the widely-used classic stellar models.  I will show examples of how the effects of rotation and binarity can drastically change the properties of both stars (brightness, color, ionizing flux, chemical yields, X-rays etc.) as well as their final fate as core-collapse and pair-instability supernovae and gamma-ray bursts. These developments call for a critical reconsideration of the implications for a wide variety of astrophysical problems where the classic stellar models are used, which do not account for these effects.