This award supports Dr. Stanford E. Woosley, a post-doctoral student, and a graduate student from the University of California-Santa Cruz in a collaboration with Wolfgang Hillebrandt of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching bei M¼nchen. The groups will combine their expertise to investigate the evolution and dynamics of massive stars. These short-lived giants explode as supernovae giving rise to entire new generations of stars, black holes, neutron stars, and the elements that make up all matter. Specific topics to be investigated are evolution of massive stars, the evolution of the progenitor of the bright supernova SN 1987A, the explosion mechanism for massive stars, the explosion mechanism for massive stars, `failed supernovae,` models for gamma-ray bursts based on the accretion of stellar-mass objects by black holes, and neutrino-driven winds.
