NSF Teleconference for Reporters on Unprecedented Black Hole Discovery in Nature

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will sponsor a teleconference press briefing detailing the discovery of unprecedented black holes to be published on December 8th in the journal Nature (now published online).

With support from NSF, and using telescopes at the NSF-supported International Gemini Observatory, as well as the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the McDonald Observatory in Texas, researchers were able to obtain detailed information about the centers of massive elliptical galaxies--which astronomers think most, if not all, are black holes--data the research team did not have the technical capability to obtain just a few years ago. The new results may help astronomers determine how black holes and galaxies form over the history of the universe.

Who:

Chung-Pei Ma, professor of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley; and UC, Berkeley graduate student Nicholas McConnell, graduate student (first author of the paper), University of California, Berkeley.

What:

Live teleconference for journalists.
Dial: 877-918-9240 or 1-630-395-0267
Passcode: "Massive"

When:

Monday, Dec. 5, 2011, 3:00 p.m. EST/noon PST

-NSF-