Jeremy Heyl is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UBC. His recent research has focused on compact objects: white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. These are the most extreme objects in the universe. Astrophysicists think that they provide the power behind quasars and gamma-ray bursts, the brightest objects in the recent universe. His team discovered that stars like the Sun lose much of their mass in the final million years of nuclear burning, not gradually over a billion years as previously thought. He discovered waves in the oceans of neutron stars (yes, neutron stars have oceans) and the fate of our Galaxy after it collides with the Andromeda galaxy). Hint: there will be no Milky Way after that happens!