ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM

Most massive stars are born in binaries or higher multiplicity systems, where mass exchange interactions are common. Modeling these interactions is numerically challenging, and the study of their impact on stellar properties, supernova explosions, and further interactions between stars and compact objects, although highly needed, is still lacking. In this talk, I will show how we can use nearby observations (e.g., of the nearest O type star to Earth, the brightest X-ray binary in the sky) to constrain numerical models of interacting binaries and discuss the implications of the stellar structures modified by mass transfer for supernova, gravitational wave, and Thorne-Zytkow object progenitors.