On Sunday 23 June, Katie Robertson gave a talk in Groningen at a workshop on Probabilities in Cosmology, as part of a stellar lineup of speakers including Sabine Hossenfelder and Robert Wald.

Katie’s title was “Stars and Steam Engines: To What Extent do Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics Apply to Self-Gravitating Systems?”. The conclusion was an irenic resolution to recent debates about the astrophysics of elliptical galaxies – statistical mechanics does apply to them, but thermodynamics doesn’t.