It reflects our major research themes in observational and theoretical cosmology, high-energy physics and elementary particle physics in a wider sense, particle astrophysics, large experiments and detector technologies, data-intensive science, and the design and exploitation of next-generation scientific infrastructure.
The series features talks that bridge fundamental physics—from the early Universe to the Standard Model and beyond—with the technological and experimental advances that make these discoveries possible.
The aim of these colloquia is to be accessible to a wide audience across the Laboratory and beyond, providing a forum for discussion across theory, experiment, and instrumentation. All members of the University community are warmly encouraged to attend.
See the details of all upcoming and previous talks below. Please check this page regularly for updates as speakers are confirmed and abstracts are added.
Venue and Time: Wednesday 4 March 2026, 16:00, Ray Dolby Auditorium, Ray Dolby Centre, Cavendish Laboratory, JJ Thomson Avenue, CB3 0US.
Title: Imaging Black Holes from ground and space
Abstract:
In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) captured the first-ever image of a black hole, observing itsdark shadow in the radio galaxy M87. In 2022, the black hole at the center of our Milky Way was imaged, validating our predictions made more than two decades ago. This confirmed the presence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies and provides strong evidence for the presence of an event horizon. The next step is to measure the properties of these black holes, test theories of gravity, and to understand the physics near the event horizon: Are these black holes spinning? What is the structure of accretion flows and jets? Is rotational energy extracted from the black hole to launch plasma jets? Where and how are particles accelerated that produce the radiations we see? To answer these question we will be engaging in campaigns to produce “color movies” of black holes, i.e. make dynamic images of black holes and observe them at multiple frequencies. To do this we are developing new imaging algorithms, new operational models, and new telescopes. The EHT is expanding further. Funded by an ERC Synergy grant,“Black Holistic”, we are now also building the 14m Africa mm-wave telescope (AMT) in Namibia, equipped with multiband receivers for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and transients research. In the future space interferometers will improve the results by another order of magnitude and promise even deeper insights into the nature of black holes.
About the speaker: Heino Falcke received his Ph.D. summa cum laude from the University of Bonn in 1994. He was Postdoc at the University of Maryland, Visiting Professor at the University of Arizona, Staff Scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and at the Dutch National Radio Astronomy Institute ASTRON in Dwingeloo. Since 2007 he has been full professor of astroparticle physics and radioastronomy at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He co-founded the Event Horizon Telescope and was chairperson of its Scientific Council until 2019 and is now member of the board. Falcke is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Knight in the Orderof the Dutch Lion. His awards include the International Balzan Prize, the Dutch Spinoza Prize, the Henry Draper Medal of the US National Academy of Science, the Amaldi Medal of the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation, and the Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in the UK. He has received three European ERC grants to support his work. He wrote the bestselling book “Light in the Darkness: black holes, the universe and us” about the first image of a black hole, which has been translated into ten languages.