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…

Few individuals have left as profound a mark on the world as J. Robert Oppenheimer, renowned for his pivotal role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Yet, Oppenheimer’s contributions extend far beyond this infamous accomplishment. Last month, I watched the premiere of Oppenheimer in the cinema and was intrigued by a scene showcasing his major, yet lesser-known, contribution to science. In 1939, Oppenheimer collaborated with his student, George Volkoff, and published a groundbreaking paper titled “On Massive Neutron Cores” which laid the foundation for our understanding of neutron stars. The Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit establishes that if the mass of a neutron star is greater than a critical value of approximately 2 solar…

The last three weeks have been exciting for three members of the Jetset group, namely Prof. Sera Markoff and her two students, León Sosapanta Salas and Wanga Mulaudzi. The three first travelled to Hong Kong to attend the ‘Astrophysical Black Holes: A Rapidly Moving Field‘, which was a meeting in honour of the 2020 Shaw Prize recipient, Prof. Roger Blandford. Prof. Roger Blandford is known for his theory, the Blandford-Znajek process, which states that relativistic jets extract their energies from rotating black holes. The meeting brought together experts from all over the world to share their findings on astrophysical black holes. León and Wanga also presented their PhD works during…

As a highly trained professional in a complex field with rare skills, the main question on my mind is “Will I be replaced by a box in the corner ?” To answer this question I decided to put ChatGPT-4 to the test in the common-or-garden field of high-energy astrophysics and, in the interest of fairness, have it test me in its turn ! I can report that my job may be safe(ish), for now. It understood context uncannily well and got the main things right in frightening detail but needed prodding about important areas. When reminded of an omission it acted like it knew all along and filled in the…

Black holes are some of the most fascinating objects in the universe, known for their immense gravity and mysterious nature. While they are famously known for their ability to swallow everything in their vicinity, including light, black holes can also emit powerful beams of energy called jets. Jets are narrow beams of plasma that shoot out from the proximity of black holes at relativistic speeds, meaning they are close to the speed of light. This week, Nature published a new observation of the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy that captured the first image of the jet and the black hole shadow together. See the science…

Ever wonder about the lifetime of a star or how black holes form as stellar remnants? When clouds of gas and dust cool and collapse under gravitational forces, they form protostars. Protostars can be seen as the infancy stage of stars because they are still gathering mass from the parent molecular cloud. The masses of these protostars drastically affect the evolution of the star over the course of time. The more massive the star is, the more violent its death is. The less massive, the more likely the star is to become a dwarf (see Figure above). Dwarfs are generally systems with low energetic processes. The three subclasses of dwarfs…

Often in these blog posts we talk about two things. At one end of the spectrum, there are supermassive black holes that exist in the centre of galaxies (106 – 1010 M⊙). And at the other, stellar mass black holes (∼ 10 M⊙), which are the endpoints of the evolution of the most massive stars and can be found orbiting another star, forming a black hole X-ray binary (BHXB). But what about the poor forgotten black holes with masses between these two classes? After all, it makes sense to think that, at some point in cosmic time, black holes between 10 and 106 M⊙ had to exist, in order to…