In the field stories

Exploring how stars work

Understanding how stars create and destroy elements as they evolve helps us understand the origin of the material that makes up galaxies, planets such Earth, and even ourselves.

“There’s a mysterious group of stars – about 1% of red giants contain huge amounts of Lithium, but we don’t know where the Lithium comes from,” said Dr Simon Campbell, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy.

To investigate this mysterious group of Lithium-producing stars, Simon conducts complex simulations on the Magnus supercomputer at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth, transfers the gigantic data files via Australia’s high speed research network AARNet to his Monash University ‘Vault’ storage facility (supported by the Monash eResearch Centre), and then accesses his 100 terabytes of data via the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud.

Submitted by Jane Gifford

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