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Shep Doeleman | Time
April 17, 2024

For astronomers, seeing evidence in the sky of something predicted from pure theory brings with it a special joy. A burst of excitement as a puzzle piece falls into place.

In November, a novel approach developed years ago by Priyamvada Natarajan brought us closer to under­standing a basic mystery in astron­omy: How do the supermassive black holes that lurk at the centers of most galaxies form? She had speculated that they might have gotten a jump start in the very early universe if clouds of gas collapsed to form massive black-hole “seeds” that then grew within their host galaxies over billions of years. It took the piercing gaze of the James Webb Space Telescope to finally observe a galaxy so far back in cosmic time, and with a central black hole so massive, that what scientists saw could be explained naturally by Priya’s theory.

Full article can be found here.

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

REGISTER HERE

Accretion on supermassive black holes (SMBHs) is often accompanied by energy and momentum outflow in the form of jets and winds. This feedback can modify the gas conditions in the surrounding galaxy and thus plays an important role in galaxy evolution. At the same time, the gas conditions in the galaxy determine how much gas feeds into the black hole, thereby determining the evolution of mass, spin and feedback efficiency of the SMBH.

The strongly coupled feeding-feedback problem is notoriously difficult to handle self-consistently in numerical studies of galaxy-SMBH evolution because of the enormous range of scales involved, which is typically eight or nine orders of magnitude. Since current numerical techniques are unable to bridge the vast range of scales, the coupling is generally handled via ad hoc sub-grid prescriptions with adjustable parameters tuned to reproduce observations. This Workshop aims to discuss strategies for transitioning toward a more first-principles treatment of the feeding-feedback problem using new techniques to bridge scales.

The Workshop will take place at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University, on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. It will bring together a small group of experts and interested scientists who will consider current progress on the Bridging Scales Problem and will discuss avenues for future work. The Workshop Schedule will consist of a small number of talks by relevant experts, each followed by extended time for discussion.

Organizers

Ramesh Narayan
Priya Natarajan

Local Organizing Committee

Hyerin Cho
Nicole Grenier
Kung-Yi Su

Current List of Participants

Daniel Angles-Alcazar
Olga Borodina
Koushik Chatterjee
Tiziana Di Matteo
Lars Hernquist
Phil Hopkins
Minghao Guo
Aretaios Lalakos
Matthew Liska
Ben Prather
Sean Ressler
Angelo Ricarte
Rachel Somerville
Sasha Tchekhovskoy

Logistics
The Center for Astrophysics is located at 60 Garden Street, Cambridge. Convenient hotels include: The Sheraton Commander Hotel, the Porter Square Hotel, the DoubleTree Suites Boston-Cambridge, and the Homewood Suites by Hilton. Participants are urged to book early as the meeting is soon after Harvard Commencement, so hotel rooms are likely to be in demand.

REGISTER HERE

Workshop Tuesday, May 28, 2024

CfA astronomers led two new EHT studies that have produced the first polarized light image of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Read Full Press Release HERE