30 April 2009

Speaker: Jenny Greene (Princeton)

Title: Bok Prize Lecture:
From Galaxy Nuclei to Galaxy Outskirts: Building Bulges from the Inside Out

Abstract: This will be a talk about how bulges grow, focusing predominantly on clues derived from the study of accreting nuclear black holes. I begin by demonstrating that black holes grow inefficiently in galaxies without classical bulges, providing new support for the premise that black hole and bulge evolution are inextricably linked. I present new constraints on the shape of black hole-bulge relations in late-type galaxies based on stunning new results from megamaser campaigns. Finally, I speculate on a possible connection between high redshift observations of compact bulges on the one hand and overly massive black holes on the other. I propose to test these speculations with a number of ongoing studies focusing on the outskirts of local elliptical galaxies.

Video of the Presentation (Talks can be viewed with RealPlayer. Free download is available from www.real.com )