ASTRONOMICAL TRANSIENTS
- SCI & TECH
News: Astronomical transients:
bright in the blink of an eye
What's in the news?
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Recently, the Indian-American
astronomer Shrinivas Kulkarni was awarded the Shaw Prize for Astronomy in 2024 for
his work on the physics of astronomical transients.
Astronomical Transients:
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In astronomy, a ‘transient’ is any celestial object
whose brightness changes in short spans
of time.
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There are many kinds of astronomical transients,
all of them united by phenomena that are violent in some measure.
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Astronomers study transients to understand where
their violence comes from and what that can tell us about non-transient events.
Examples of Transients:
1. Supernovae:
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When the outer layers of large stars blow up while
their cores implode because the stars have run out of elements to fuse.
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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.
2. Active Galactic
nucleus (AGN):
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The centres
of massive galaxies host supermassive black holes. Sometimes, these black
holes actively feast on matter in their orbit.
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Interactions between the black holes and the matter
in this process cause the latter to acquire energy and glow with a changing
brightness.
3. Fast Radio Burst
(FRB):
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It was discovered in 2007 and it can emit more than 10-times as much energy as
the Sun in a few milliseconds.
Go back to basics:
Shaw Prize:
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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).
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It includes a $1.2m cash prize.
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There are also Shaw Prizes for life sciences and medicine, mathematical sciences.