THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Thushara G S Pillai, senior research scientist at Boston University (BU) and an alumnus of Kendriya Vidyalaya at Pattom and Government Women’s College in Thiruvananthapuram made the nation proud with her stupendous achievement. She had captured the first images of magnetic fields reorienting near the site of star formation in a cluster of young stars 1,400 light years away.
In a paper published in Nature Astronomy, BU astronomer Thushara Pillai says magnetic fields within molecular cloud formations made of cosmic dust and gas help feed young, growing stars. Her research helps solve some of the mysteries about how stars come to be and to what extent molecular clouds in interstellar space play a role.
She made the discovery by observing star formation in Serpens South, a nearby cluster of about 60 stars, only about 1,400 light years away from Earth, discovered in 2008. The stars in the cluster are relatively young. Their proximity to Earth and young age provided her with an ideal vantage point for observing the conditions of the molecular cloud surrounding the young stars.
G Madhavan Nair, former ISRO chairman and scientist, said he was happy to note that young scientist Thushara who had her roots in Thiruvananthapuram had contributed to solving the mysteries associated with the formation of the universe. “For time immemorial, astrophysicists are trying to establish how and why the universe originates in the form of galaxy of stars and planets from energy. It is known that the formation of stars is due to the complex interplay of gravitational field and magnetic field turbulence, gases and dust.
Thushara’s finding is unique in throwing some light on the contribution of the magnetic field in the formation of stars. I am proud of the young scientist from Thiruvananthapuram for her exemplary findings and contribution to astrophysics,” he said.
She was a 1997 Class XII batch alumnus of the school and a former BSc Physics student of Government Women’s College. “We are very proud that our former student brought such a great achievement. Her mother Shyamala was the teacher of the school,” said KV Pattom principal S Ajayakumar.
Thushara pursues research with her husband Jens Kauffmann, a US-based astronomer. Thushara is the daughter of P Gopalakrishna Pillai and late K S Shyamalakumari of Pattom. After completing BSc, she had joined IIT Madras to pursue MSc Physics. She had taken her PhD in astronomy from the Max Blanck Institute of Radioastronomy in Germany.