The Shaw Prize Lecture in Astronomy

As we survey the universe in more and different ways, we discover more and different cosmic sources. Many of these sources are prodigiously powerful. A particularly instructive way to study them is to consider the flow of energy and to relate this to physical processes that we have studied in our earth-bound laboratories. In this talk I will describe some of the ways that cosmic power becomes observable, paying special attention to normal stars and galaxies, neutron stars and black holes.