Helioseismology has given us an incredibly detailed view of the interior structure and evolution of the Sun. Asteroseismology of Sun-like stars is just beginning to place this knowledge into a larger context. We can now address new questions from an observational standpoint: How was the Sun seismically different in the past, and how will it change in the future? Are the physics that have been so well calibrated to match one point in the H-R diagram just as valid under slightly different conditions? Is the activity cycle of the Sun the stellar exception, or the rule? The future development of solar physics will be driven in part by what we find from a broad survey of solar-like oscillations in other stars. And what we find may depend on how we search. I will discuss general issues related to matching seismic models to the observed pulsation frequencies, and I will describe how parallel computers and genetic algorithms can unlock the full potential of stellar seismology.
References:
Seismic Inference using Genetic Algorithms
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0208292
Lessons for Asteroseismology from White Dwarf Stars
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0501421