V. Buiten: “Cosmic collisions: the growth spurts of merging galaxies and their black holes”

Описание: This event took place at Cultuur Café Leidse Lente in Leiden on November 24, 2025.

V. Buiten: “Cosmic collisions: the growth spurts of merging galaxies and their black holes”
When two galaxies collide, they are forever changed. Large amounts of material pile up in the galaxy centres, setting off intense bursts of star formation unlike anything in our own Milky Way, and providing fuel for the central supermassive black holes. In turn, both the young massive stars and the feeding black holes launch powerful winds and outflows, capable of blowing out vast concentrations of gas to the outer regions of the galaxy. This mechanism rapidly shapes the star formation history of the galaxies, and grows their central supermassive black holes. In this talk I will discuss successes and challenges of our work to understand what goes on in their mysterious dark hearts.

Victorine Buiten is a PhD student at Leiden Observatory. Her fascination with complex puzzles shines through in her research on the most obscured galaxy nuclei, where scientists really need to consider every angle imaginable to understand the hidden nature of the central power source. She is particularly interested in the behaviour of greenhouse gases, like methane and carbon dioxide, in these buried nuclei.



The other speaker of the night was E. Pizzati: “From quasars to little red dots: a journey through (cosmic) time”. See this talk here:    • E. Pizzati: “From quasars to little red do...  


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