Space Sciences/Astrophysics Seminar with Lea Marcotulli on The Most Distant and Powerful Jets Through Cosmic Time

About 10% of accreting supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies are capable of launching extreme relativistic jets. When pointed close to our line of sight, these are called blazars. Shining as bright as a hundred trillion Suns and detected at the dawn of time, blazars are of great astrophysical importance as they can provide us crucial information about the origin and growth of supermassive black-holes in the early universe, and its connection to jet triggering mechanisms. In this talk, I will highlight most recent results on the evolution of the most powerful persistent objects in the universe and present ways in which to find more such sources within the Universe’s first 2 billions years. I will also give an outlook for blazars science in view of a future all-sky MeV mission and X-ray probe, and underline prospects for neutrino detection.

Sponsored by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.