5月30日【严济慈大讲坛】第二十六讲《The Restless Universe (and the Periodic Table)》 [2025-05-21]

报告题目：《The Restless Universe (and the Periodic Table)》

报  告 人：Prof. Shrinivas R.Kulkarni

报告时间：2025年5月30日16:00

报告地点：科大东区物质科研楼三楼报告厅
报告摘要：Following the Big Bang the Universe was homogeneous in matter,energy and barren of chemistry. It is the stars which, 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.

报告人简介：Shrinivas R. Kulkarni is the George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy at the California lnstitute of Technology (Caltech). He served as Executive Officer for Astronomy (1997-2000) and Director of the Caltech Optical Observatories (2006-2018). He led major projects like the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). His research focuses on time-domain surveys, UV missions, radio astronomy, and the interstellar medium. Shrinivas R. Kulkarni has authored 676 refereed papers (60,907 citations, h-index 125) and mentored 32 students and 50 postdocs. He received many honors, including Guggenheim Fellowship (2018) and Shaw Prize (2024) (邵逸夫奖).