Shrinivas Kulkarni: The Restless Universe (and the Periodic Table)

6PM at the Morehead Planetarium

“Following the Big Bang the Universe was homogeneous in matter, energy and barren of chemistry. It is the stars that, through their life and death, built up the periodic table. Astronomers have now identified several classes of cosmic explosions of which supernovae constitute the largest group. The Palomar Transient Factory was an innovative 2-telescope, and its successor, the Zwicky Transient Factory (ZTF), is a high-tech project with gigantic CCD cameras and sophisticated software system, and squarely aimed to systematically find “blips and booms in the middle of the night”. The speaker will talk about the great returns and surprises from this project:

super-luminous supernovae, new classes of transients, new light on progenitors of supernovae, detection of gamma-ray bursts by purely optical techniques, routine identifications of planets being engulfed by their aging parent stars and troves of pulsating stars and binary stars. ZTF is poised to become the stepping stone for the national flagship project, the Rubin Observatory.”