Speaker
Description
The early universe was composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, and over time, nucleosynthesis led to the formation of other heavier metal elements. Therefore the detailed abundance patterns within stars are indicators of their ages. Using a dataset of 6613 stars from APOKASC, their abundance ratios and asteroseismic ages, we implemented a K-dimensional tree to match each star with another star with the most similar abundance and effective temperature data. By using the median age of the star’s neighbors, we predicted its asteroseismic age. If the difference between the predicted and measured asteroseismic ages was substantial, we labeled the star an outlier. Through this process we found 66 outliers whose asteroseismic ages do not match their surface abundances, suggesting mass transfer. Identifying these stars is a step towards better understanding stellar histories and how binary systems can change observed surface compositions of stars. Research into the kinematics and UV fluxes of these stars could confirm the presence of binary interactions.
