Senior Aunoy Poddar

Senior Rohan Choudhury

Q: What did you submit?

A: It’s in the category of astrophysics [Astrophysics is physics in space]. I wrote a paper on radiative pressure [Radiative pressure is the pressure exerted by electromagnetic radiation, which is a type of energy that behaves like a wave in space] and radiation feedback, which is pressure exerted from light, specifically photons from stars. There’s less dark matter than we’d expect in the center, which is bad because everything is based on a theory that there’s a certain amount of dark matter in the center. Using a supercomputer, I was able to prove that it’s not concerning that there isn’t that much dark matter. In layman’s terms, I used supercomputers to study dark matter at the center of the galaxy.

Q: When and how did you do the research?

A: It took me 10 weeks and I worked all summer at UC Santa Cruz. I got accepted to an internship and a professor gave me papers to read. It was mostly programming and math. I used supercomputers to collect data from simulations on a galactic scale. There was one control simulation and one simulation that was affected by radiative pressure. Then I showed that there was a significant difference between them and figured out why. That aspect took about 10 weeks. The actual research paper was simply a summary of my work and only took two weeks. I used graphs to illustrate the differences in the two simulations in terms of gas type, gas speed, star formation rate, speed of star orbitals and other types of things.

Q: What led up to you applying for an internship at UCSC?

A: I’m very interested in science and math. After taking AP Physics, I realized that I was quite interested in physics, so I thought that the internship and research would be a good next step.

Q: What are your future plans?

A: I am interested in physics and engineering and as of this moment, I’m more inclined to a research career. But, we’ll see in college.

Additional reporting by Jady Wei.