Recently, Srinivas R Kulkarni, an Indian-origin US scientist has been awarded the prestigious Shaw Prize in Astronomy for 2024.
Scientist Srinivas R Kulkarni Honoured with Prestigious Shaw Prize in Astronomy
- He has been awarded for his ground-breaking discoveries about millisecond pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, & other variable or transient astronomical objects.
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Shaw Prize
- The annual award is given by the Shaw Prize Foundation, which was founded in 2002 by the Hong Kong-based filmmaker, television executive and philanthropist Run Run Shaw (1907–2014).
- It includes a $1.2m cash prize.
- There are also Shaw Prizes for life sciences and medicine; and mathematical sciences.
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Astronomical Transients
- Transients are astrophysical phenomena that change their brightness over a relatively short time.
- These can be caused by a number of different astrophysical sources, and each of these transient events has particular characteristics.
- There are many kinds of astronomical transients, all of them united by phenomena that are violent in some measure.
- Significance : Astronomers study transients to understand where their violence comes from and what that can tell us about non-transient events.
ULTRASAT (Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite)
It is a near-ultraviolet imaging satellite with a wide field of view (204 square degrees).
- Design & Development : It is a mission being developed by the Israel Space Agency (ISA).
- NASA has entered into an implementing arrangement to provide launch services and share in the scientific results.
- Utility :
- It will provide high cadence observations and rapid target-of-opportunity response.
- It will provide a powerful capability for time-domain and multimessenger astrophysics, and
- It will have scientific applications from solar system studies to cosmology.
- It will conduct unprecedented surveys for variability in the ultraviolet sky.
- This will enable exciting new discoveries in fields such as gravitational waves, supernovae, and exoplanet habitability.
- It has a field of view 200 times greater than NASA’s GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) mission.
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Kinds of Transients
- Supernovae : when the outer layers of large stars blow up while their cores implode because the stars have run out of elements to fuse.
- Many a supernova has been known to become so bright that it emits light more intensely than the stars in the rest of its host galaxy combined.
- Active galactic nucleus (AGN) : The centers of massive galaxies host supermassive black holes. Sometimes, these black holes actively feast on matter in their orbit.
- Interactions between the black holes and the matter in this process cause the latter to acquire energy and glow with a changing brightness.
- Fast radio burst (FRB) : FRBs are very energetic sources 10-times as much energy as the Sun,which usually only last on the order of milliseconds.
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May 30, 2024