Astronomy Colloquium

  A confluence of recent observations in the past decade have indicated that some basic assumptions that guide our understanding of massive stars are substantially wrong.   In this talk, I will discuss some of the observational evidence and likely problems with the models, as well as broader implications.  The latter part of the talk will focus on the ramifications for pre-supernova evolution, and specifically, how these issues relate to our understanding of the diversity of supernova types, their environments, instability and eruptive mass loss in supernova progenitors, and connections to the physics of core collapse itself.