PRESS RELEASE
www.fbbva.es
DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION AND
INSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS
The Director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC)
is the next speaker in the BBVA Foundation astrophysics and cosmology lecture
series
Roger Blandford: “Black holes power
the galactic ecosystem”

This expert on the Universe’s most energetic phenomena wants to “set the
record straight” on the nature of black holes, so we cease to see them as a
threat

This edition of the “Science of the Cosmos. Science in the Cosmos” lecture
series features researchers in the front line of science, like John M. Kovac,
the head of the experiment that last year announced the possible
detection of gravitational waves from the Big Bang

All lectures in this and previous editions are available for viewing on the
BBVA Foundation website
Madrid, June 1, 2015.- “Black holes are no more threatening to human life than
jumping off a high cliff!” explains Roger Blandford, Director of the Kavli Institute for
Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University (United States).
With these words, the expert in our Universe’s most energetic phenomena wishes
to clear up what he describes as one of the most widespread misconceptions
about black holes: the idea that they are “unusually threatening and somehow
evil.” His mission is to set the record straight: “Black holes are good. From a cosmic
perspective, they are agents of change responsible for powering the galactic
ecosystem.”
Blandford – who admits, however, that he is “personally not sanguine about using
wormholes for time travel” – has talked in the BBVA Foundation about the role of
black holes in the architecture of the Universe. His lecture, titled “The High Energy
Universe: Gamma Rays, Cosmic Rays, Neutron Stars and Black Holes”, is the fourth
in the latest edition of the “Science of the Cosmos. Science in the Cosmos” series.
Ours is a quiet corner of the Universe, while others are alive with events releasing
immense quantities of energy: explosions of stars of a far larger mass than our sun,
black hole collisions, matter accelerating as it plunges into a black hole… The
study of such phenomena is a fairly new branch of astrophysics, largely because
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the Earth’s atmosphere acts as a shield preventing most of the high energy
radiation from reaching the surface.
Blandford, whose degree was in chemistry, developed an interest in the subject at
the start of his career, under the guidance of reputed expert Sir Martin Rees, who
“suggested some very good problems in high energy astrophysics.”
“Cosmic sources show a remarkable propensity to accelerate elementary
particles to enormous energies, far higher than we can achieve on Earth,” he
relates. “Sometimes we observe these particles directly as cosmic rays; sometimes
we observe them indirectly through the high energy gamma rays that they emit.
The underlying sources of these particles are believed to be black holes, neutron
stars and strong shock waves.”
Black holes distribute the “chemical elements necessary for life”
The last few decades have been a fertile period for the study of high energy
sources, one that has radically transformed our vision of the cosmos. Questions like
what makes some galaxies shine so brightly, or what are the forces accelerating
the high energy particles that smash into the Earth’s atmosphere, now have
credible answers, Blandford remarks, “even if we do not understand the full story.
In the first case, the key lies with supermassive black holes, of which we know there
to be one at the nucleus of every galaxy – including our own. In the second, the
primary accelerator turns out to be supernova remnant shock waves.
The study of black holes has been at the forefront of recent advances. Not only
has general relativity, as Blandford affirms, given us “a good understanding” of
black holes, but we have also learned that they sow throughout the Universe “the
chemical elements necessary for life” and that “on the large scale, massive black
holes may stimulate galaxy formation.”
This is not to say that there are no open questions waiting to be solved. Among
those Blandford highlights are the nature of the fueling of massive black holes in
active galactic nuclei, the origin of ultra high energy cosmic rays or the cause of
short gamma ray bursts. Nor do we yet know enough about the mechanisms of
Type Ia supernovae, whose light serves to determine cosmological distances.
Blandford is keeping close track of the progress of the Event Horizon Telescope
(EHT), designed to directly observe what is known as the event horizon of a black
hole, essentially the region that marks its boundary – any object that passes
beyond it cannot return and is fated to disappear down this cosmic plughole.
Bio notes
Roger Blandford took his BA, MA and PhD degrees at Cambridge University.
Following postdoctoral research at Cambridge, Princeton and Berkeley he took
up a faculty position at California Institute of Technology in 1976 where he was
appointed Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics in 1989. In
2003 he moved to Stanford University to become the first Director of the Kavli
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Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and the Luke Blossom Chair in the
School of Humanities and Science. His research interests include black hole
astrophysics, cosmology, gravitational lensing, cosmic ray physics and compact
stars. He is a fellow of the Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences and the American Physical Society, and a member of the National
Academy of Sciences. In 2008-2010, he chaired a National Academy of Sciences
Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
About “Science of the cosmos. Science in the Cosmos”
Since it began in March 2011, the “Science of the Cosmos. Science in the
Cosmos” lecture series has explored some of the main open questions in
astrophysical research. Experts from the top ranks of the world scientific
community have shared their vision of the origins of the Universe, the search for life
on other planets, how chemical elements are forged in the heart of stars, or the
nature of dark matter and energy.
Videos of all the lectures in the series, attended by a numerous public, are
available on www.fbbva.es
The next speakers after Roger Blandford will be:
John M. Kovac of Harvard University (United States), who researches into cosmic
background radiation with telescopes located at the South Pole – a site he has
visited on 24 occasions since 1990. Head of the BICEP2 project, he also co-leads
other experiments including BICEP3 (September 14).
Elena Aprile, Professor of Physics at Columbia University (United States), founder
and spokesperson of the XENON Dark Matter experiment, one of the most sensitive
direct searches for dark matter worldwide. She also pioneered the development
of the liquid xenon imaging detector technology used in XENON and similar
experiments (October 15).
For more information, contact the BBVA Foundation Department of Communication and
Institutional Relations (+34 91 374 5210; 91 537 3769; 91 374 8173/comunicacion@fbbva.es)
or visit www.fbbva.es
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