Carol Rifelj Lecture Series: Hungry Monsters: Feeding and Quenching of Black Holes
The existence of supermassive black holes, with millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, residing at the centers of galaxies throughout the universe is well supported by a substantial body of indirect and, more recently, direct imaging evidence. When mass is pulled into a black hole gravitationally, in a process called ‘accretion’, a tremendous amount of energy is released signaling this growth in the form of a ‘quasar’. This growth is stochastic and episodic with a variety of routes for triggering and quenching.
Franklin Environmental Center, The Orchard-Hillcrest 103