Tag: Lincoln Greenhill

  • Science & Tech

    Harnessing fun for serious science

    Researchers from chemistry, computer science, and astronomy are learning a trick or two from video games and investigating a new kind of computing based on graphics processing units.

    7–10 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    CfA researchers discover black holes aren’t so black

    Common wisdom holds that we can never see a black hole because nothing can escape it – not even light. Fortunately, black holes aren’t completely black. As gas is pulled into a black hole by its strong gravitational force, the gas heats up and radiates. That radiation can be used to illuminate the black hole…

    1–2 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    New maser measurements trace detail in active galactic core

    The roiling cores of many active galaxies are difficult to see in detail because of surrounding gas and interstellar dust. Smithsonian astronomers announced Jan. 12, 2006, however, a first-time measurement that may help to better trace the structure of these unusual regions. Elizabeth M. L. Humphreys and other Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) research team…

    1–2 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    A pancake, not a doughnut, shapes distant galactic center

    Astronomer Lincoln Greenhill (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and colleagues have found direct evidence for a “pancake” of gas and dust at the center of Circinus — a thin, warped disk surrounding the galaxy’s central, supermassive black hole. That disk shapes the galaxy’s nucleus. It shadows different regions from the “glare” of the black hole, a…

    1–2 minutes