Advancing Astronomy at MIT with X-ray Reverberation Mapping
Professor Erin Kara of MIT is utilizing X-ray reverberation mapping to study the physics of supermassive black holes. Her research focuses on how radiation from a black hole's corona interacts with the surrounding accretion disk to reveal properties of these dense objects.
Why it matters
Advancing our understanding of black holes provides fundamental insights into the evolution of galaxies and the nature of spacetime.
Black holes are one of the most misunderstood objects in the Universe. Much of the confusion stems from their name. When you hear the words "black hole," you might picture a tunnel in spacetime that leads to... certain death or something else. In reality, black holes are the collapsed remnants of stars that have become so dense that the gravitational force on their surfaces reaches the speed of light. As a result, nothing (including light) can escape their outer boundary, known as the "event horizon."
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