Nitika Yadlapalli - Three Minute Thesis - 4/25/2023

all right picture this you're a detective and you get called to the scene of a crime when you get there you learn that someone has died and now it's become your job to figure out what happened in the events leading up to their death where would you start as an astronomer I act like a detective in the same way the most massive stars in our universe

we need to use some forensics of Our Own let's start by asking a question where are these Stars when they're exploding the environments surrounding stars hold precious information about their final days massive stars are enshrouded in these hydrogen envelopes and in the final months and days of their lives these envelopes will get expelled out into the space surrounding the star then the Supernova explosion that follows

will generate a powerful shock wave that moves through and interacts with this material this interaction is what produces millimeter waves a key clue to cracking our case the brightness of the millimeter waves can tell us about how much material was expelled the pattern of the millimeter waves can tell us how was it expelled was it slow and continuous or was it in many big bursts and

finally a key element is that these millimeter waves are brightest when our Supernova shock is smaller and faster and the material it's moving through is denser meaning its brightest very soon after the Supernova explosion occurs and this is very important to us because the sooner we detect any emission from the Supernova the closer into the time of death of the star were actually investigating so answering

questions like these is why the focus of my thesis project has been to commission a new millimeter telescope called Sprite located just a few short hours north of Caltech Sprite is one of the few millimeter telescopes in the world and we have the unique power of controlling its entire observing program by creating this resource that is dedicated to observing supernovae and similar phenomenon we have the

ability to frequently and promptly revisit these Cosmic crime scenes and build up a detailed record about how the millimeter brightness of these crime scenes are changing with time with this abundance of new information I plan to collect using Sprite we stand to push forward our understanding of how life and death works in the cosmos thank you [Applause]