November

Shep Doeleman: Imaging Black Holes with The Event Horizon Telescope

Shep Doeleman: Imaging Black Holes with The Event Horizon Telescope

July 15, 2019

Recent technical advances and observations have now demonstrated that the goal of making an image of a black hole is within reach. Using the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), in which widely separated radio dishes are linked together to form an Earth-sized array, our group has succeeded in confirming event horizon scale structures in two super massive black holes: Sagittarius A*, the 4 million solar mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way (Nature, 455, 78, '08), and M87, a 6 billion solar mass black hole in the giant elliptical galaxy Virgo A (Science, 338,...

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Galaxy Quest: Just How Many Earth-Like Planets Are Out There?

Galaxy Quest: Just How Many Earth-Like Planets Are Out There?

November 5, 2013

A team of planet hunters estimates that about 22 percent of the Sun-like stars in our galaxy may have planets about the size of Earth that are bathed in similar amounts of sunlight — and potentially habitable. That's the conclusion of a new analysis by Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley of observations taken by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which was launched in 2009 to hunt for potentially habitable Earth-like planets around other stars.... Read more about Galaxy Quest: Just How Many Earth-Like Planets Are Out There?