News Excerpt:
The Indian-American astronomer Shrinivas Kulkarni was awarded the Shaw Prize for Astronomy in 2024 for his work on the physics of astronomical transients.
About Astronomical transients:
- In astronomy, a ‘transient’ is any celestial object whose brightness changes in short spans of time.
- They are studied to understand where their violence comes from and what that can tell us about non-transient events.
- There are many kinds of astronomical transients, all of them united by phenomena that are violent in some measure. For example -
- Supernovae:
- These are the most well-known transients. These are formed 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):
- An active galactic nucleus, or AGN, is an extremely bright central region of a galaxy that is dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas as it falls into a black hole.
- The extremely luminous central region is emitting so much radiation that it can outshine the rest of the galaxy altogether.
- AGNs emit radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays. This radiation is produced by the action of a central supermassive black hole that is devouring material that gets too close to it. A galaxy hosting an AGN is called an ‘active galaxy’.
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About Shaw Prize:
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