In 2011 UCSB issued a press release about "zombie stars," based on my review article on Type Ia Supernovae as Stellar Endpoints and Cosmological Tools [PDF].  I talked about it on the July 26 episode of Radio Causeway. Hundreds of articles were written about it, but here are a few:

• Daily Nexus (UCSB student newspaper) Aug. 3)
• Space.com July 27
• SB News-Press July 10
• Astronomy.com
• EarthSky July 5
  
• SB Independent July 4
• Universe Today July 4
  
• Science Daily June 30
• UPI June 30
• My favorite:  PaganSpace.net, "The meeting place for the occult community."

TV:  I was mentioned in the 6/30/11 episode of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.  A clip of me and Mike Massimino is shown at about 29 minutes in, and I'm mentioned at the end of Mike's segment.

I'm a host of the 3rd season of Known Universe on the National Geographic Channel.   All episodes have now aired in the US.   Here's the trailer.   I've written a series of articles on Ain't It Cool News about each episode:
301:  Surviving Space
302:  Treasure Hunt
303:  Most Powerful Stars
304:  Extreme Space Tech
305:  Biggest Cosmic Blasts
306:  Construction Zone
307:  Escaping Earth
308:  Beginning of the End

And here's an article about my participation in the series in the Santa Barbara Independent.

Another show I was on, Inside the Milky Way, is now on DVD.

Movies:
I also write about movies -- I cover film festivals, but I also write about the science of movies:

Gravity
Star Trek Into Darkness
Star Trek (2009) [And follow-up chat with writers]
Thor
Green Lantern
Avatar
Conversation with James Cameron on Avatar

Areas of reserach:  Type Ia supernovae, cosmology, Dark Energy, core-collapse supernovae, gamma ray bursts, galaxies

Review article on Type Ia Supernovae as Stellar Endpoints and Cosmological Tools for Nature Communications [PDF].

Comments by me on research putting limits on the progenitors of SNe Ia from Scientific American and Sky and Telescope.

I recently wrote a Nature News and Views [pdf] (for scientists, but written generally) on a simulation that smashed two white dwarfs together to produce a supernova.  And together with much of my field, I wrote this white paper about the future prospects for research in thermonuclear (Type Ia) supernovae.

Help us to find supernovae using Galaxy Zoo: The Hunt for Supernovae!  With our new project, the Palomar Transient Factory, we are taking data at such a high rate that we can't keep up with the discoveries.  So we need your help!

I was the co-chair of the scientific organizing committee for a June, 2011 conference in Sydney, Austrialia, called Supernovae and their Host Galaxies. I was also recently on the SOC for a conference in the Netherlands called Observational Signatures of Type Ia Supernova Progenitors.

Video of two talks I've given at KITP (for scientists):  2009: What the hell is this?, and 2007: Is the brightest SN Ia really super-Chandra?

PhD Dissertation: pdf  Publications: ADS 

I wrote the supernova spectrum fitting program superfit.   Contact me if you want to use it. 

Sky & Telescope article I co-wrote:  Nov. 2002, Anatomy of a Supernova: pdf 

Radio:  Quirks and Quarks [mp3], BBC Leading Edge [mp3], BBC World Service  Science in Action [mp3].

I'm a member of the Supernova Legacy Survey, which discovers and follows supernovae to probe the history of the expansion of the universe and determine the nature of Dark Energy.  We've discovered almost 2000 likely supernovae: list.  I'm also a member of Pan-STARRS1, which is also finding and following thousands of explosive and transient events in the universe.

Random articles with quotes:   

• Mostly wrong article in Toronto student newspaper (Varsity)
• Merging stars making supernovae (National Geographic)
• The Physics of Superman (Discovery Channel) 

Research  

Super-Chandra:  In the Sept. 21, 2006 issue of Nature, I led a paper showing that the Type Ia supernova SNLS-03D3bb was the explosion of a white dwarf that exceeded the Chandrasekhar mass.  Type Ia supernovae are thought to be the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf star in a binary system with another star.  The white dwarf steals matter from the secondary star until it gets near the Chandrasekhar mass and explodes.  But somehow this white dwarf exceeded the limit.  Download the News & Views[pdf].  Press:  New Scientist, BBC News, MSNBC, CBC, ABC News, Physics World, ESPN, Space Daily, Sky & Telescope, AMNH, Cosmos Magazine, Universe Today, Need subscription: Science, Nature web site, BBC Sky at Night (Jan. 2007),  Sky & Telescope (July 2007), Science News (Oct. 7, 2006), Western Standard (Oct. 23, 2006),

Evolving supernova demographics:  In a recent ApJ Letter we showed that Type Ia supernovae in the early universe were on average 12% brighter than modern supernovae.  This is because there was more star formation early on, and SNe Ia from young, massive stars are brighter.  Press: New Scientist, Science Daily, Subscription required: Nature Research Highlights, Link broken:  Discovery Channel News (cached).

Dark Energy:  Our first-year cosmology results, published in Astier et al. 2006 show that the Dark Energy is consistent with Einstein's Cosmological Constant to within 9% statistical error.  Our new results, released in 2011, provide a 5-6% constraint.  If the Dark Energy is a cosmological constant, it has some pretty remarkable properties.  That means it is a property of the vacuum of space itself.  As the universe expands, the Dark Energy does not get diluted like normal matter.

Classroom

I most recently taught Astro 1 at UCSB in spring 2011.