Music of the Spheres – Samba Cruz

Dr. Christian Aganze earned his doctorate in physics from UC San Diego in June 2023. Aganze is a galactic archaeologist. In his Ph.D. research, he identified distant brown dwarfs in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope to map their distribution in the Galaxy. Brown dwarfs are mysterious objects sometimes called “failed stars” because they lack high enough temperatures to sustain hydrogen fusion due to their low masses. Christian’s work also uses stellar streams (groups of co-moving stars) to map the dark matter structure of the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies. Dark matter is a theorized substance that gravitationally interacts with regular matter. At Stanford, he is a member of the DESI survey (based at Kitt Peak in Arizona), where he continues to use stellar streams, low-mass stars, and brown dwarfs to test our current understanding of the structure and evolution of the Milky Way. He is also excited about using the next generation of ground-based and space-based facilities, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, the Euclid mission, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, to explore similar science questions.