July Lecture: The supermassive black hole at the centre of the Galaxy
Fri 24 Jul 09 8:00pm - 9:30pm
Location: Elizabeth Murdoch Theatre A, University of Melbourne (adjacent to the School of Physics)
Presented by Professor Reinhard Genzel, Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany & Dept of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Missed this lecture? See it here.
Evidence has been accumulating for several decades that many galaxies harbor central mass concentrations that may be in the form of black holes with masses between a few million to a few billion time the mass of the Sun. I will discuss measurements over the last decade, employing adaptive optics imaging and spectroscopy on large ground-based telescopes that prove the existence of such a massive black hole in the centre of our Milky Way, beyond any reasonable doubt. These data also provide key insights into its properties and environment. Future interferometric studies of the galactic centre black hole promise to be able to test gravity in its strong field limit. I will also briefly discuss the cosmological evolution of massive black holes.