PhD defence

An international team of astronomers has published a map of the sky showing over 25,000 supermassive black holes. The map, to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, is the most detailed celestial map in the field of so-called low radio frequencies. The astronomers, including Leiden astronomers,…

The Sun and all the stars in the night sky reside in the Milky Way galaxy. In the at-rest reference frame of the Galaxy, typical stars travel with velocities of about 100-200 kilometres per second.

Meet the newest Full Professor at the Leiden Observatory: Joe Hennawi. All the way from Santa Barbara, California, Hennawi will strengthen the astronomy institute. In Leiden, he will use his recent ERC Advanced Grant to study how supermassive black holes come into existence.

An international team of astronomers led by Matus Rybak (Leiden University) has proven, thanks to accidental double zoom, that millimetre radiation is generated close to the core of a supermassive black hole. Their findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

How are supermassive black holes born? That is the question astronomer Elena Maria Rossi is trying to answer. But how do you investigate something you cannot see?

An international team of astronomers led by Violeta Gámez Rosas (Leiden University) has observed a supermassive black hole hidden in a ring of dust. This discovery fits the idea that the so-called active centers of galaxies are much more similar than observations show, because the viewing angle from…

Lecture, Oort lecture

One unravels the origin of the largest black holes in the universe, the other investigates the influence of stellar wind on the atmosphere of exoplanets. Both Elena Maria Rossi and Aline Vidotto receive a Vici grant for their research into the mysteries of the universe. ‘I have no idea yet how we can…

Since the Middle Passage is in the North Atlantic, and the North Atlantic has a relationship with the arctic, what relationship does the Arctic have with the Middle Passage? How can this relationship be used to provide a space of healing by uncovering Afro/diasporic counter narratives?

Promotores: S.F. Portegies Zwart, E. M. Rossi

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

What is dark matter? How do supermassive black holes form? ‘Primordial’ black holes might hold the answer to these long-standing questions. Leiden and Chinese cosmologists have identified a new way in which these hypothetical objects could be produced just after the Big Bang. Publication in Physical…

An Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) is a highly luminous region at the center of a galaxy, powered by the accretion into a supermassive black hole and emitting energy from radio waves to gamma rays, often outshining the host galaxy.

Why do black holes emit thermal radiation? And how does a closed quantum system thermalize?

The thesis deals with the study of giant radio galaxies (GRGs), which are radio galaxies of megaparsec sizes.

Schalm

How do humans, non-humans and their interactions and relations shape the home as ecological and social space?

HOME will search for a diversity of Palaeolithic shelters during the Late Pleistocene through informed systematic surveys and excavations of archaeological sites in East-Central Europe.

Investigating Neolithic houses in Britain through microwear and residue analysis of stone tools

Continuous optimization is never easy: the exact solution is always a luxury demand and the theory of it is not always analytical and elegant.

In this thesis, we use low-frequency and high-frequency radio observations to address the following questions regarding quasars: is the radio loud/quiet quasar dichotomy real?

In this book Adam Fairclough chronicles the odyssey of black teachers in the South from emancipation in 1865 to integration one hundred years later.

This thesis aims to enhance our understanding of galaxies by testing theoretical models of galaxy formation against observations, particularly in the cases of extreme systems which have been found to have an excess of baryonic mass in their central regions, in the form of either supermassive black holes…

In White Lies and Black Markets, Fatah-Black offers a new account of the colonization of Suriname—one of the major European plantation colonies on the Guiana Coast—in the period between 1650-1800.

Optimization tasks in practice have multifaceted challenges as they are often black box, subject to multiple equality and inequality constraints and expensive to evaluate.

You don't only work at the university, but often at home too. Working at home presents various challenges. Here you can find tips and tricks to help you work at home in a pleasant and responsible manner.

If you've only just come to live in the Netherlands, life can at times be both exciting and difficult. To help you feel at home more quickly, a Feel at Home Fair is being organised in city hall, The Hague on 3 February. Leiden University will be present at the fair. It's a good opportunity to attend…

Lecture, Oort lecture

Lecture, Studium Generale

The physical origin of the dozens of stellar-mass binaries, the mergers of which have been detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration via gravitational waves, is still unknown.

How is Indian foreign policy made? This special issue of the journal India Review, edited by political scientists Nicolas Blarel (Leiden University) and Avinash Paliwal (SOAS University of London) features a number of interesting case studies that bridge the gap between Foreign Policy Analysis and India’s…

Uncertainty and noise are frequently-encountered obstacles in real-world applications of numerical optimization. The practice of optimization that deals with uncertainties and noise is commonly referred to as robust optimization.

This book is the first systematic analysis of the changes in the use of goods and services by households of Black South Africans since the early nineteenth century.

An international team of astronomers has witnessed a cosmic weather event that has never been seen before.

As we are working very hard to make our University more green, it is of upmost importance that you join us in our battle and start increasing the local biodiversity from your own house! Every bit will help, it is beneficial for you own mental health and most importantly it is fun! We have created this…

Through the clever use of two types of telescopes, a team of researchers has produced stunning images of clusters of galaxies. This not only produces beautiful images, but also provides more information about the enormous amounts of energy released around supermassive black holes in clusters. The astronomers,…

This project investigates diversifying and democratizing heritage through practices of “home-making”. We propose to research ‘home-making’ as a non-binary practice of combining memories of roots and routes, dwelling in the present, and desires for the future.

Rossi

The aim of the project is to contribute to the process of archive formation ongoing in Post-Apartheid South Africa through the inclusion of photographs that have been either unacknowledged or excised from the national canon.

Dr Madalina Busuioc has completed a study for the European Parliament titled

Scientists are asking your help to find the origin of hundreds of thousands of galaxies that have been discovered by the largest radio telescope ever built: LOFAR. Where do these mysterious objects, which extend for thousands of light-years, come from? A new citizen science project called LOFAR Radio…

The brightness peak of the ring around M87's supermassive black hole has shifted 30 degrees counterclockwise in a year. This is shown by new images released by the Event Horizon Telescope consortium.

In this thesis new methodologies are developed for the detection and systematic study of radio sources in the early universe. This allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, the activity of supermassive black holes, and the final phase transition of our universe:…

They are often referred to as ‘The Oscars of the Natural Sciences’: the Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics. This year, the prize for physics went to the Event Horizon Telescope team, which took the first-ever picture of a black hole. Four Leiden astronomers were…

When a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, it is torn apart by strong tidal forces in a tidal disruption event (TDE).