Astrophysicist by day, a music and pop-culture enthusiast by night, our very own Sera Markoff is elected as a member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences). This prestigious recognition underscores her contributions to the advancement of astrophysics and her role as a leading figure in both science and science outreach.  The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, known as the KNAW (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen), is one of the oldest and most prestigious scientific organizations in the Netherlands. It serves as a key advisory body to the Dutch government on scientific matters, and its members are selected based on…

A year into my research and I’m slowly uncovering a lot about the zoo that populates objects under the title “Active Galactic Nuclei” (AGN). The fact that they are multi-wavelength emitters means that we get a variety of features to try and understand across different energy bands, but that also means that categories and sub-categories have become increasingly complex to describe them. The most straightforward standard model includes the central black hole, an accretion disk, a jet, an obscuring torus, and ionized clouds of gas near the black hole (broad/narrow line region; AGN model shown in Figure 1). Around the 1990s, a unification scheme for the numerous features of AGN…

It has been a while since I wrote my last post and much has happened in the meantime. As I explained in an earlier post, I’m a master’s student and within the master’s program for Physics & Astronomy there are seven tracks. I am in the Gravitation, Astro- and Particle Physics (GRAPPA) track which focuses on the intersection of theoretical physics, experimental (astro)particle physics and astrophysics. Now, the cool thing is that one MSc student from the GRAPPA track is awarded a grant to enhance their master’s thesis each year. This grant is called the Volkert van der Willigen grant after its initiator and it is meant to support young…

The introduction of density and internal energy floors is seemingly unphysical, but at the same time, a necessary feature of General-Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic simulations. The open magnetic field lines in the polar regions of our code that thread the black hole Event Horizon become devoid of any matter/energy due to the outflow boundaries at the inner (horizon) and outer grid radii, causing the plasma to either be expelled, or eaten up by the black hole. Given the vacuum-phobic nature of the GRMHD equations, one has to artificially inject some energy and density if the local values of the same in a cell (in the drift frame of the jet, ensures conserved…

Hey everyone! So, I did not physically attend the 243rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) held in New Orleans, Louisiana, from January 7th to 11th, 2024. However, my presence was still felt at the conference, thanks to my advisor, Sera Markoff, who presented two interactive posters on my behalf. Let me start by introducing my first poster presented at the conference. Check it out through the link: “High-resolution insights into black hole accretion dynamics and jet phenomena”. In this work, we perform a convergence study with the GPU-accelerated GRMHD (General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic) code H-AMR on a wider range of resolutions than has ever been previously explored. What made…

As discussed in Part I, I think it’s very important to teach children about science and what it’s like to be a scientist. It’s more important that we teach children invaluable skills such as being curious, critical thinking and creativity than that they secure high grades in school. In an ideal world, every child is introduced to science and is allowed to discover whether they like to do science. Unfortunately, the Dutch school system has some issues regarding this and there is still the need for initiatives like the Altair project. Let us take a look at the Dutch school system and what can be done. Before delving into this,…

Hello, my name is Scott, and I’m a master’s student working on modelling the emission of relativistic outflows of matter around supermassive black holes in the centre of galaxies. In this final year of my master’s, I’m working on research full-time and it has been an interesting and challenging time so far. Obviously, I’ve been busy with scientific work, but this also led me to think about the position of science in society and the role that scientists play in educating people. Scientists are concerned with developing knowledge and making this accessible to everyone such that we can help humanity in different fields. Personally, I’m convinced that educating people is…

A lot of what we interpret from our astronomical telescopes is either through images/videos or raw data rendered understandable through physical plots in real or Fourier spaces. But what if we can render that data to cater to the other human senses? In this blog article I discuss very briefly the mechanics of data sonification as I understand it. I recently came across the Audio Universe mission (https://www.audiouniverse.org/home) which aims to collect tools in order to support a plethora of target audience ranging from scientists, outreach managers, educators, students and the general masses to represent data as sound. In addition to the research potential of sonification, what particularly caught my…

An exhibition about black holes will open next week at the Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen, where we can think about the mysteries surrounding these extreme gravity objects. Those astrophysical monsters have not only inspired scientists but also artists from all fields, especially in visual arts and music. A great example is the Black Hole Symphony where the music leads us to a sensory experience of how black holes behave. In understanding science, it is vitally important to have a graphic representation where for example we can visualize what happens to the plasma when it is near a black hole. The Event Horizon Telescope is a project that captured/photographed the shadow…