Astronomy Colloquim: David Soderblom, Space Telescope Science Institute

Some day we can hope to hear an announcement of the signs of life on a planet around another star, and when that happens, our first question will be “How old is that star?”
In this talk I will present a framework for understanding the problem of stellar age estimation, the limitations encountered with conventional (pre-seismology) methods, how asteroseismology provides constraints on key physical parameters of stars, and what limitations still exist in the problem of estimating stellar ages.