"Atronomers are proposing a new model for the invisible material that makes up most of the universe: It is possible that a fraction of dark matter particles may have a tiny electrical charge."
At the annual Awards Ceremony for the Department of Astronomy Edo Berger presented Leo Goldberg prizes for excellence in a senior thesis to Danielle Frostig,graduating senior.
Edo Berger also presented the Leo Goldberg prize for excellence in a senior thesis to Eden Girma. Eden is also a recipient of a University Hoopes Prize for the project entitled “Astrometric Detection of Intermediate Mass Black Holes.”
At the annual Awards Ceremony, Rita Fireman and Astronomy Chair Avi Loeb are seen presenting the Fireman Fellowship Award to Philip Cowperthwaite for this year's best dissertation in the field of Astrophysics at Harvard. This award is named in honor of Rita's husband, Edward Fireman, a long time physicist at the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory. Phil is a student of Edo Berger and will be starting a Hubble Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena.
"What is the distribution of sizes of black holes in our universe? Can black holes of any mass exist, or are there gaps in their possible sizes? The shape of this black-hole mass function has been debated for decades — and the dawn of gravitational-wave astronomy has only spurred further questions."
![Still from a simulation showing how black holes might interact in the chaotic cores of globular clusters. [Carl Rodriguez/Northwestern Visualization]](http://static.projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/styles/os_square_100_100/public/fig1-1-676x336.png?m=1526310517&itok=ji_-npHA "Sizes of Black Holes Throughout the Universe")