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7:30 pm, March, March 22nd, 2017
Room 202, Hennings Building
6224 Agricultural Road, UBC
Supermassive Black Holes
John Kormendy
University of Texas, Austin
Supermassive black holes, with masses up to many billions of
Suns, live at the centers of many galaxies. They power quasars, where a
volume as tiny as our Solar System outshines by many times a host galaxy
made from hundreds of billions of stars. As in Hercules A, they can fire
jets of particles like firehoses millions of light years into space. I
review how this picture was developed, starting with my first supermassive
black hole discovery in the Andromeda Galaxy in 1988. I will also describe
how, with 86 supermassive black hole detections, we can now begin to
understand how they do (and do not) affect the evolution of their host
galaxies; and how they may have begun with the merging of dead remnants of
the first stars that formed in the Universe.
To learn more please visit his
webpage.
Additional resources for this talk: slides(not available yet), video.
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