Scientific Society hosts talk on black holes
Black holes are the most extraordinary phenomena, quite unlike any other objects in the universe. Yet they exist across a vast range of scales in all parts of the universe and are accessible to study with our most powerful telescopes.Some of these black holes shine brightly as matter spirals down towards them and while doing so, produce powerful outflows moving at the speed of light. We may see some of these black holes as they are born when massive stars collapse or compact neutron stars collide and merge with them. Some loom so large in the sky that we can photograph their edges through the Event Horizon telescope from within which nothing, not even light, can ever escape to the outside universe.
In this lecture, Prof Rob Fender presents some of the cutting-edge results on black hole astrophysics in all of these extraordinary regimes and demonstrates how a planned new facility, the Africa Millimetre Telescope AMT to be sited in Namibia, will help to transform the field.
Rob Fender is Professor and Head of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Visiting Professor at the University of Cape Town. He is the recipient of the Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for outstanding contributions to observational astrophysics, as well as an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant.
In December 2022 he and Professors Markoff and Falcke in the Netherlands were awarded a €14 million ERC Synergy Grant, 'Blackholistic', to bring together our understanding of black holes in mass scales. A key component of this project is the construction of the AMT which will both extend dramatically the baseline coverage of the Event Horizon telescope and work as a stand-alone transient monitoring facility.
The talk takes place at 19:00 on Tuesday 27 February at the Namibia Scientific Society.
To participate online via Zoom, follow https://zoom.us/j/8023841980 or for more information, follow https://www.namscience.com/event/black-hole-astrophysics.