For the past 40 years, Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard has been a pioneer in astrophysics.
Now, Aarhus University’s professor has been awarded one of science’s highest honors: the Kavli Prize. He shares the award with Roger Ulrich from UCLA and Conny Aerts from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Pioneers in a new field
Christensen-Dalsgaard’s research has largely dealt with a phenomenon called a star earthquake. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he studied this phenomenon in our own solar system, devising a groundbreaking model of the Sun’s internal structure based on its oscillating patterns.
He later used similar methods to study other stars in our galaxy, which led to Kavli Prize Committee to christen him the “first generation” of asteroseismologists.
“I am very happy and honored. And a little overwhelmed – it was something I did not expect at all. It is of course nice to acknowledge the research I have done for a long time, but the award goes just as much to the whole field of research as it goes to us, ”says Christensen-Dalsgaard. Videnskab.dk.
Studying the stars makes an impact on Earth
Today, the Solar Model developed by Christensen-Dalsgaard is used all over the world, and the dimensioning, weighing and age dating tools that emerged from Christensen-Dalsgaard’s research have been used to study thousands of stars in the Milky Way.
NASA and the European Space Agency have sought Christensen-Dalsgaard’s expertise to make sense of data collected from CoRoT, Kepler and TESS planetary missions.
According to the Kavli Prize Committee, he has also spent “large amounts of energy training and inspiring the next generations of helio and asteroseismologists”.
Retires but does not stop
Christensen-Dalsgaard is officially retiring this year, but he plans to continue his research at Aarhus University. Understanding the stars, he says, is crucial to understanding the universe as well as our place in it.
For Christensen-Dalsgaard, there is another reason why his work – and that of his colleagues – will and must continue.
“Because we are curious,” he claims.
Source: The Nordic Page