Dr. Om Prakash is a character in Young Sheldon. He is a professor in the physics department at East Texas Tech in the early 1990s with access to the university's telescope. Dr. Prakash serves as Sheldon Cooper's scientific adviser when the teen prodigy seeks approval for telescope time to search for exoplanets that could support alien life. The two initially bond while discussing the precedent set by mainstream science in treating new ideas as a threat, both listing historical examples. However, when he suggests Sheldon help him find subatomic particles that move backwards in time, referring to tachyons, his pupil scoffs at the proposition as nonsense.
Dr. Prakash and Sheldon proceed to start the exoplanet search, accessing the data from a telescope in Hawaii. The professor explains how to analyze it in accordance with the transit method of exoplanet detection, with Sheldon finding the endeavor less fun than presented in Star Trek. The pair are later joined in the telescope room by Grant Linkletter and John Sturgis, following a change in perspective by the latter two professors, each who had adamantly rejected Sheldon's extraterrestrial focused research proposal. Dr. Prakash clarifies that fluctuations in the data set are within the standard deviation when inquiries are posed by the theoretical physicists. (Little Green Men and a Fella's Marriage Proposal)
Trivia[]
- His office door plaque reads Prof. Om Prakash | Applied Physics. His research spans from astroparticle physics to exoplanet detection, akin to Rajesh Koothrappali.
- The time frame of Dr. Prakash and Sheldon's search for planets beyond our solar system predates the actual first confirmation of the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star made in 1995, when a giant planet was found in a four-day orbit around the nearby star 51 Pegasi.
- Later, presumably, he had given money to Prof. Linkletter when the latter passed around an envelope asking for money to ensure Sheldon's summer trip to the Heidelberg Institute in Germany. (German for Beginners and a Crazy Old Man with a Bat) Previously, Linkletter did not envy "poor Prakash" for having to suffer Sheldon as a mentee. (Little Green Men and a Fella's Marriage Proposal)
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