Growing Black Holes over 12 Billion Years

The 2015 Hintze Biannual Lecture delivered by Professor Meg Urry Using multi-wavelength surveys, we measure the growth of supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies over the last 12 billion years. Most actively growing black holes are heavily obscured and not seen in large optical surveys; at the same time, the deep multi-wavelength surveys too little of the sky to find rare objects like luminous quasars. So completing the census of black hole growth requires a large-volume X-ray survey, to explore hidden, high luminosity and distant black holes. Theorists have suggested that mergers of gas-rich galaxies trigger Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), whose radiation and outflows may quench star formation and strongly affect galaxy evolution. Our morphological analyses show that mergers probably do trigger luminous quasars but not the far more numerous moderate-luminosity AGN, which grow slowly through secular processes.

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The Department of Physics public lecture series. An exciting series of lectures about the research at Oxford Physics take place throughout the academic year. Looking at topics diverse as the creation of the universe to the science of climate change. Features episodes previously published as: (1) 'Oxford Physics Alumni': "Informal interviews with physics alumni at events, lectures and other alumni related activities." (2) 'Physics and Philosophy: Arguments, Experiments and a Few Things in Between': "A series which explores some of the links between physics and philosophy, two of the most fundamental ways with which we try to answer our questions about the world around us. A number of the most pertinent topics which bridge the disciplines are discussed - the nature of space and time, the unpredictable results of quantum mechanics and their surprising consequences and perhaps most fundamentally, the nature of the mind and how far science can go towards explaining and understanding it. Featuring interviews with Dr. Christopher Palmer, Prof. Frank Arntzenius, Prof. Vlatko Vedral, Dr. David Wallace and Prof. Roger Penrose."