The Science@Cal Lecture Series
Science@Cal is proud to present a series of free, public science lectures on the third Saturday of every month. These talks are given by renowned UC Berkeley scientists and aimed at general audiences.
Snacking, Gorging, and Cannibalizing: The Feeding Habits of Black Holes
On July 20 our talk will be given by Dr. Steve Croft and will be entitled "Snacking, Gorging, and Cannibalizing: The Feeding Habits of Black Holes".
NOTE THAT THIS TALK IS IN DWINELLE HALL 145, NOT OUR USUAL LECTURE THEATER
A new generation of telescopes is coming online. Operating at wavelengths from radio, through optical, to gamma ray, they are particularly well-suited to time-domain survey science: essentially, making large-format movies of the sky. These telescopes will have the capability to tell us about how black holes grow: through cannibalizing each other in stupendous mergers that shake the very fabric of space-time, through swallowing huge volumes of ten million degree gas, and through shredding and consuming stars that happen to pass too close. The new observations of these processes are helping to transform our understanding of the growth of the enormous black holes that lurk at the heart of almost all galaxies.
Steve is an Assistant Project Astronomer working on large radio surveys, and transient and variable astronomical sources. He helped commission the Allen Telescope Array for science operations and developed data analysis pipelines. He got his PhD from the University of Oxford, working on actively feeding supermassive black holes in galaxy cluster environments. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, studying distant galaxy clusters, as well as investigating a fascinating burst of star formation triggered by a jet from a nearby black hole. Steve is an expert in the use of data at a wide range of wavelengths from many different telescopes.
Images courtesy Steve Croft
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Talk Details
Talks take place on the UC Berkeley campus at 11am. Doors open thirty minutes before the talk and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Each talk is planned to last an hour, plus time for at least a few questions at the end. We would like to start the talks on time, and avoid disruption from people entering the auditorium during the talks, so please try to arrive at least 10 minutes before the start. Most talks take place in the Genetics and Plant Biology Building, Room 100, on the north-west corner of the UC Berkeley campus (see map or images below), but some do not - please check the calendar below. Limited hourly pay parking is available on weekends on and nearby campus — please check the signs. We encourage you to take public transport — BART and bus lines are within walking distance. We also record the talks and post them on this site (click on the speaker names for previous months below). If you're nearby though we encourage you to come to the talks in person!
Left: Genetics and Plant Biology Building
Right: Lecture Theater Entrance
2013 Talk Calendar
| Date | Venue | Speaker | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 19 | 100 GPB | Dr. Mark Lescroart | The Shape of Our Thoughts (Visual Perception of Geometric Shape) |
| Feb 16 | 105 Stanley | Prof. John Dueber | Synthetic Biology: Engineering Living Cells with New Capabilities |
| Mar 16 | 100 GPB | Dr. Máté Ádámkovics | Cloudspotting at Saturn and Titan: Learning About Weather from a Billion Miles Away |
| Apr 20 | UC Berkeley | Cal Day | UC Berkeley's Open House |
| May 18 | 100 GPB | Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi | Connecting Infinitesimal to Infinity: The Search for Dark Matter |
| Jun 15 | 100 GPB | Prof. Mariska Kriek | A Deep View of the Early Universe: Extreme Makeovers and Overweight Galaxies |
| Jul 20 | 145 Dwinelle | Dr. Steve Croft | Snacking, Gorging, and Cannibalizing: The Feeding Habits of Black Holes |
Aug 17 | 145 Dwinelle | Dr. Gregory Delory | Mars exploration (title TBA) |
| Sep 21 | 100 GPB | Prof. Gibor Basri | NASA's Kepler Mission: The Search for Earth 2 |
| Oct 19 | 100 GPB | TBA | TBA |
| Nov 16 | 100 GPB | Prof. Carlo Sequin | Science - Math - Art |
| Dec 21 | 100 GPB | TBA | TBA |
Previous Talks
You can watch the videos of previous talks in the series by clicking on the talk titles below:
Posted |
Title |
|---|---|
| November 1, 2010 - 12:00am | The Brain’s Got Rhythm: the Role of Neuronal Oscillations in Regulating Large-Scale Brain Networks |
| December 1, 2010 - 1:00am | Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill – How Resilient is Mother Nature? |
| January 8, 2011 - 1:47pm | WISE Astronomy: The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer |
| January 19, 2011 - 1:07pm | Hearts of Darkness: Black Holes in Space |
| February 21, 2011 - 5:50am | The Current Status of Climate Change - A Non-Partisan Analysis |
| March 24, 2011 - 8:42am | Cal Day Open House |
| April 28, 2011 - 4:16am | Extreme Sociality: Supercolonies of the Invasive Argentine Ant |
| May 27, 2011 - 11:05am | Synthetic Biology: Beating the Cell at its Own Game |
| June 20, 2011 - 10:36am | Exoskeleton Systems for Medical Applications |
| July 17, 2011 - 1:13pm | Nanotechnology-Enabled Environmental Monitoring |
Other Talk Videos
You can also check out the video of "The Great Debate: Are We Alone?" with Geoff Marcy and Dan Werthimer discussing the existence of intelligent life in our Galaxy, and a lecture by Geoff Marcy on the "Discovery of the First Earth-Size Planets and Prospects for Life in the Universe". Thanks to Chris Klein, Andrew Siemion, and James Anderson for producing these videos.
Cal Day 2013 Videos
Videos from UC Berkeley's Cal Day open house are also available. You can see Raphael Bousso talk about "Black Holes, Information, and the Quest for a Unified Theory of Nature", or Adrian Lee talk about "The Microwave Background: A Cosmic Time Machine".
Archives of 2009 International Year of Astronomy Talks
The Science@Cal lecture series was preceded by a 2009 lecture series presented by the Department of Astronomy as part of the celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. To see videos of these talks, visit the astronomy lecture series website.
Questions?
Contact Steve Croft at scroft@astro.berkeley.edu.
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