more-inOver 70 years after Indian astrophysicist and Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar predicted that rapidly rotating stars would emit polarised light, scientists in Australia have observed the phenomenon for the first time. The equipment provided unprecedented insights into the star, which is in the constellation Leo, allowing the scientists to determine its rate of spinning and the orientation in space of the star’s spin axis. In 1968, other researchers built on Chandrasekhar’s work to predict that the distorted, or squashed, shape of a rapidly rotating star would lead to the emission of polarised light, but its detection has eluded astronomers until now. “Its high precision has allowed us to detect polarised light from a rapidly spinning star for the first time,” he said. It has previously been extremely difficult to measure these properties of rapidly rotating stars, researchers said.

Source: The Hindu September 19, 2017 08:26 UTC