Physics Program Presents
Seeing Black Holes Through X-ray Eyes
Friday, October 15, 2021
Hegeman 107
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Victoria Grinberg, European Space Agency
Black holes are perhaps the most mind-boggling object ever conceived by physicists. At the same time, they are real astrophysical objects created at the end of the life of massive stars. And astronomers can observe them - or rather their influence on their interaction with their environment. Some of the best objects to do so are X-ray binaries, systems that consist of a black hole and a normal star. As some of the stellar material is accreted onto the black hole, an accretion disk forms and X-ray emission is produced. In this talk, I will first discuss how observing this emission using space-based X-ray telescopes allows us to learn more about black holes and in particular measure their spin and then focus on a recent discovery of so-called returning radiation from black hole accretion disks.For more information, call 845-758-4391, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Hegeman 107