Live near Boston? Don’t miss the Cambridge Science Festival!
The Festival is more than a full week of activities to bring science to the general public, being held throughout the city of Cambridge. We’ll be there – will you?
Simulating Massive Black Hole Seed Formation
What is the connection between galaxy mass and supermassive black hole occupation?
Interpreting a Galactic Burp
What happens when a normally-dormant black hole at the center of a galaxy tears apart a passing star and burps it back out again in the form of a jet? The authors of this paper think that the Swift satellite has recently witnessed exactly this!
Investigating a “Cosmic Train Wreck”
In this paper, the authors describe a system of three supermassive black holes interacting on kpc scales, and use their result to estimate the frequency of such interactions.
Dissecting a Merger between a Quasar and a ‘Green Valley’ Galaxy
Mergers play an important role in any galaxy’s evolution. A coincidental observation of a quasar and companion galaxy linked by a photoionized gas bridge offers an exclusive look at the merger process at moderate redshift.
Supermassive Black Holes and Galaxy Mergers
When galaxies merge, the super-massive black holes at their center can merge as well. General relativity predicts that the newly merged black hole can, in forming, be kicked with a large velocity out of the galactic center!