{"links":{"self":"http://dataportal.arc.gov.au/NCGP/API/grants/DE260101982"},"data":{"type":"grant-details","id":"DE260101982","attributes":{"code":"DE260101982","administering-organisation":"The University of Sydney","announcement-administering-organisation":"The University of Sydney","scheme-name":"Discovery Early Career Researcher Award","grant-status":"Active","funding-commencement-year":2026,"years-funded":3,"project-start-date":"2026-10-01","anticipated-end-date":"2029-09-30","grant-summary":"Unravelling the Internal Physics of Stars that have Rotational Twists. This project aims to study a newly discovered class of astronomical objects — stars with rotational 'twists', whose insides and outsides rotate around different axes. These stars remain poorly understood, as they have only just been discovered. This project expects to observationally characterise and search for more such rotationally twisted stars, to describe their physical features, and to study the astrophysical implications of their internal rotational misalignment. In order to do so, this project will develop and deploy novel analysis techniques for measuring the internal structure and rotation of stars. This will qualitatively advance the state of the art in both the theory and observations of internal stellar rotation. ","funding-current":534298.00,"funding-at-announcement":530058,"investigators-current":[{"title":"Dr","firstName":"Joel","familyName":"Ong","roleName":"Discovery Early Career Researcher Award","roleCode":"DECRA","isFellowship":true,"orcidIdentifier":"0000-0001-7664-648X "}],"investigators-at-announcement":[{"title":"Dr","firstName":"Joel","familyName":"Ong","roleName":"Discovery Early Career Researcher Award","roleCode":"DECRA","isFellowship":true,"orcidIdentifier":"0000-0001-7664-648X "}],"organisations-current":[{"organisationName":"The University of Sydney","roleName":"Administering Organisation","state":"NSW"}],"organisations-at-announcement":[{"organisationName":"The University of Sydney","roleName":"Administering Organisation","state":"NSW"}],"field-of-research":[{"isPrimary":true,"code":"5101","name":"Astronomical Sciences","type":"FOR20"},{"isPrimary":false,"code":"510109","name":"Stellar Astronomy and Planetary Systems","type":"FOR20"}],"socio-economic-objective":[{"code":"280120","name":"Expanding Knowledge In the Physical Sciences","type":"SEO20"}],"international-collaboration":["England","France","Germany","United States of America"],"lief-register":[],"achievement-summary":null,"national-interest-test-statement":"All stars spin; this drives their magnetism and shapes their internal structure. Astronomers measure this spin using starquakes, just as seismologists use earthquakes to study the Earth's interior. Using this, we have found that the insides of some stars not only spin more quickly than their outsides, but might even be \"twisted\": their insides and outsides might rotate around different directions altogether. Because we have only discovered one instance of this in the wild, we do not know for sure how this physical situation might come about, or how common (or rare) it might be. It could signify that stars like this may have previously eaten their planets, experienced severe tides from stellar companions, or been influenced by close gravitational encounters with interstellar objects. Alternatively, it may suggest that certain kinds of waves may behave more violently, deep in the interiors of stars, than previously imagined.\n\nThis project will study unusually rotating stars of this kind. It will search for more specimens of core-envelope rotational misalignment using measurements from space telescopes of thousands of these stars, and study the physical consequences of this misalignment using state-of-the-art computational hydrodynamics. It will qualitatively advance our understanding of stellar astrophysics, and cement Australia's global research leadership in it."}}}