Hallo,
am Montag, den 10. November um 14 Uhr, gibt's einen Vortrag von mir zum Thema Aktive Galaxienkerne an der
Universität Bielefeld im
Raum D5-153. Wer in der Nähe ist, kann gerne vorbeischauen.
Achtung: wegen des möglichen Streiks der Lokführer fällt der Vortrag eventuell aus. Wenn das so sein sollte, gebe ich hier am Wochenende Bescheid.Zum Inhalt:
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are the brightest persistent objects in our Universe, thought to be
powered by accretion onto super massive black holes in the centre of galaxies.
In a recent text book (Beckmann & Shrader, 2012) we are discussing in depth the status of AGN
research, the open questions and possibilities to answer them. In this presentation I will focus on
the main open issues. Is the central black hole rapidly spinning and can we proof this? What is the
dominating accretion mechanism in AGN? Why do some AGN form jets and others don't and how do
the jets start off? What keeps jets collimated out to distances of 100 kpc? Is the emission of blazars
dominated rather by synchrotron self-Compton or by external Compton processes? Which parameters
are important in the unified model? Concerning the environment and hosts, the relation between the
AGN and the surrounding galaxy and starburst activity are a main issue of debate. And we also still
lack an answer to the question, how super massive black holes were able to grow so fast in the early
Universe, forming quasars as early as z ~ 7. I outline the status of related research, formulate the
questions and try to hint at research projects able to tackle these fundamental topics.
Gruss,
Volker
