Question

Which Indian astrophysicist and Nobel laureate predicted rapidly rotating stars emitting polarised light?
1. S. Chandrasekhar
2. C. V. Raman
3. S. Ramanujam
4. Venkat Raman Ramakrishnan

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 1 : S. Chandrasekhar

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.

• In 1946, Chandrasekhar predicted the emission of polarised light from the edges of stars, prompting the development of sensitive instruments called stellar polarimeters to try to detect this effect.
• Optical polarisation is a measure of the orientation of the oscillations of a light beam to its direction of travel.
• 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.
• It has previously been extremely difficult to measure these properties of rapidly rotating stars.