Meet Cal Scientists: Astronomical Stars

These Cal scientists push the limits of scientific knowledge about the cosmos.

• Name: Steven W. Stahler
• Position: Research Astronomer
• Department: Astronomy
• Research: The focus of my research is the theory of star formation. I am discovering how stars like our own Sun form through the collapse of interstellar gas clouds. My efforts are aided enormously by the fact that stars are forming all around us, all the time. Research such as mine enriches our lives by showing us how we—our Sun and the Earth—came to be. Learning these things helps satisfy basic human curiosity. At the same time, this knowledge offers us a much broader perspective than the one we normally encounter.

• Name: Steve Croft
• Postion: Postdoctoral researcher
• Department: Astronomy
• Research: I use big telescopes to study the interaction between galaxies and the huge black holes that live at their centers. I'm also interested in studying how the night sky changes from night to night, looking for things like supernova explosions and gamma-ray bursts. To this end, I'm helping commission a new radio telescope, the Allen Telescope Array, which is a collaboration between the Radio Astronomy Lab at UC Berkeley and the SETI Institute in Mountain View. While we are doing radio astronomy, they are simultaneously searching for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. They haven't detected ET yet, but if they do, it will be the beginning of a scientific revolution.