Mr Universe

SUDIP BHATTACHARYA CAN MAP THE RADIUS OF A NEUTRON STAR

SUDIP BHATTACHARYA, is a soft-spoken, 36- year-old physicist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, who is most comfortable when talking about his work. Last month, Bhattacharya, who grew up in Uttarpara, West Bengal, led an international team of physicists in making an important discovery in his chosen area of study, the neutron star.

When a massive star ends its life, it does so in a cataclysmic fireworks display worthy of the universe called a Supernova. Sometimes, it leaves behind its heart – the star’s core squeezed by gravity into a few-kilometers radius and with a density so high that a teaspoon of its material can weigh more than a few billion tonnes. This star is almost exclusively made up of the chargeless subatomic particle, the neutron, and so from it borrows its name.

The study of matter, which is the preserve of particle physics, requires subjecting sub-atomic particles to extreme unearthly conditions that exist inside the core of stars. It is for this reason that the neutron star occupies a special place in particle physics, for it is a natural laboratory in which matter exists in conditions, so far, unreproducible here on earth.

Bhattacharya does not remember when he first got interested in the universe. “It seems that I was always interested. It was curiosity. Where does the universe end? When did time begin? If the universe is bound, what lies outside it? It didn’t make sense.”

He tried to make sense of it, and the questions that he began asking then led him finally to answering a question that no one else could answer: How do you measure the radius of a neutron star?

Bhattacharya says that a discovery is often the meeting point between chance and preparation. In this case, it was a small pattern observed and a correlation made that unravelled the whole puzzle. But scientific research has an open-ended character with no guarantees of any kind and the life of a scientist often sees periods of great anxiety and tension. “Every researcher in every field experiences this. It’s like you hit a brick wall and you can’t move forward. But one’s got to keep trying. When I meet with failure, I get depressed for a couple of days and then start working again.”

THE RESEARCH which has been given the media’s highest accolade of being ‘seriously cool’, has been the recipient of greater distinctions. It has been accepted for publication in the highly regarded journal, Monthly Notices, of the Royal Astronomical Society. As is often the case in physics, the true reach and importance of this discovery will only become clear with time, as the scientific literature builds around the discovery and it becomes the basis for new theories and newer discoveries.

Among other things, his team’s discovery might allow physicists to test the validity of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity in cases when the gravitational pull is exceptionally strong. Not bad for a boy who asked big questions.

SAMRAT CHAKRABARTI