Lulu Miller

And a note on her obituary online suggested that in her memory, in lieu of flowers, you might plant a tree.

The place I really want to start is, I wonder if you can tell me about all the different ways a galaxy can die.

Okay.

Wait, and I'm already going to stop you because that word quench.

Yeah.

Does that mean like galaxy dimming, galaxy dying?

Okay.

And so ways that the galaxy quenches is when the stars can't get that fuel?

Yeah, exactly.

So, like, what makes that fuel not get there?

Okay, so then the stars just kind of starve?

The current scientific thinking is that there are at least eight ways that a galaxy can die.

That's the theory.

But Charity Woodrum has spent her career actually looking, trying to observe the physical processes that make them dim and sputter out.

I'm Lily Miller, and today on Radiolab, we have a story of something almost mythic that Charity observed in the darkness.

Something I didn't know could happen in space.

Something Charity never expected to see.

Something that would nudge science forward in its understanding of how galaxies evolve.

And something that would end up nudging her forward, ever so slightly, through an unthinkable loss.

How did you get interested in this morbid branch of astrophysics?