WEBVTT

00:00:01.131 --> 00:00:04.432
My first love was for the night sky.

00:00:04.432 --> 00:00:05.998
Love is complicated.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:05.998 --> 00:00:10.527
You're looking at a fly-through of the 
Hubble Space Telescope Ultra-Deep Field,

00:00:10.527 --> 00:00:14.639
one of the most distant images
of our universe ever observed.

00:00:14.639 --> 00:00:17.153
Everything you see here is a galaxy,

00:00:17.153 --> 00:00:20.160
comprised of billions of stars each.

00:00:20.160 --> 00:00:24.901
And the farthest galaxy is 
a trillion, trillion kilometers away.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:25.881 --> 00:00:28.805
As an astrophysicist, I have
the awesome privilege of studying

00:00:28.805 --> 00:00:32.252
some of the most exotic objects 
in our universe.

00:00:32.252 --> 00:00:36.064
The objects that have captivated me 
from first crush throughout my career

00:00:36.064 --> 00:00:40.473
are supermassive, 
hyperactive black holes.

00:00:41.813 --> 00:00:45.931
Weighing one to 10 billion times 
the mass of our own sun,

00:00:45.931 --> 00:00:48.825
these galactic black holes 
are devouring material,

00:00:48.825 --> 00:00:52.145
at a rate of upwards of 
1,000 times more

00:00:52.145 --> 00:00:55.512
than your "average" 
supermassive black hole.

00:00:55.512 --> 00:00:57.640
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:57.640 --> 00:00:59.334
These two characteristics,

00:00:59.334 --> 00:01:02.548
with a few others, make them quasars.

00:01:02.548 --> 00:01:05.465
At the same time, the objects I study

00:01:05.465 --> 00:01:08.242
are producing some of the most
powerful particle streams

00:01:08.242 --> 00:01:09.937
ever observed.

00:01:09.937 --> 00:01:12.777
These narrow streams, called jets,

00:01:12.777 --> 00:01:17.385
are moving at 99.99 percent 
of the speed of light,

00:01:17.385 --> 00:01:21.368
and are pointed directly at the Earth.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:21.368 --> 00:01:27.257
These jetted, Earth-pointed, hyperactive
and supermassive black holes

00:01:27.257 --> 00:01:31.801
are called blazars, or blazing quasars.

00:01:31.801 --> 00:01:35.282
What makes blazars so special
is that they're some of the universe's

00:01:35.282 --> 00:01:37.802
most efficient particle accelerators,

00:01:37.802 --> 00:01:42.720
transporting incredible amounts
of energy throughout a galaxy.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:45.469
Here, I'm showing an
artist's conception of a blazar.

00:01:45.469 --> 00:01:48.669
The dinner plate by which 
material falls onto the black hole

00:01:48.669 --> 00:01:50.256
is called the accretion disc,

00:01:50.256 --> 00:01:52.082
shown here in blue.

00:01:52.082 --> 00:01:55.061
Some of that material is slingshotted
around the black hole

00:01:55.061 --> 00:01:57.085
and accelerated to insanely high speeds


00:01:57.085 --> 00:01:59.912
in the jet, shown here in white.

00:01:59.912 --> 00:02:02.599
Although the blazar system is rare,

00:02:02.599 --> 00:02:05.606
the process by which nature
pulls in material via a disk,

00:02:05.606 --> 00:02:08.883
and then flings some of it out via a jet,
is more common.

00:02:09.647 --> 00:02:12.091
We'll eventually zoom out of 
the blazar system

00:02:12.091 --> 00:02:17.180
to show its approximate relationship
to the larger galactic context.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:21.890 --> 00:02:26.295
Beyond the cosmic accounting
of what goes in to what goes out,

00:02:26.295 --> 00:02:29.342
one of the hot topics in 
blazar astrophysics right now

00:02:29.342 --> 00:02:33.053
is where the highest-energy 
jet emission comes from.

00:02:33.053 --> 00:02:36.974
In this image, I'm interested
in where this white blob forms

00:02:36.974 --> 00:02:40.617
and if, as a result, there's any 
relationship between the jet

00:02:40.617 --> 00:02:43.483
and the accretion disc material.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:43.483 --> 00:02:45.286
Clear answers to this question

00:02:45.286 --> 00:02:48.401
were almost completely
inaccessible until 2008,

00:02:48.401 --> 00:02:52.675
when NASA launched a new telescope
that better detects gamma ray light --

00:02:52.675 --> 00:02:55.387
that is, light with energies
a million times higher

00:02:55.387 --> 00:02:58.934
than your standard x-ray scan.

00:02:58.934 --> 00:03:02.824
I simultaneously compare variations
between the gamma ray light data

00:03:02.824 --> 00:03:06.493
and the visible light data from
day to day and year to year,

00:03:06.493 --> 00:03:09.767
to better localize these gamma ray blobs.

00:03:09.767 --> 00:03:12.453
My research shows that in some instances,

00:03:12.453 --> 00:03:15.513
these blobs form much closer
to the black hole

00:03:15.513 --> 00:03:17.873
than we initially thought.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:17.873 --> 00:03:19.764
As we more confidently localize

00:03:19.764 --> 00:03:22.060
where these gamma ray 
blobs are forming,

00:03:22.060 --> 00:03:25.583
we can better understand how jets
are being accelerated,

00:03:25.583 --> 00:03:28.191
and ultimately reveal 
the dynamic processes

00:03:28.191 --> 00:03:32.886
by which some of the most fascinating
objects in our universe are formed.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:33.892 --> 00:03:37.501
This all started as a love story.

00:03:37.501 --> 00:03:39.414
And it still is.

00:03:39.414 --> 00:03:43.624
This love transformed me from 
a curious, stargazing young girl

00:03:43.624 --> 00:03:45.445
to a professional astrophysicist,

00:03:45.445 --> 00:03:48.782
hot on the heels of celestial discovery.

00:03:48.782 --> 00:03:51.202
Who knew that chasing after the universe

00:03:51.202 --> 00:03:55.000
would ground me so deeply
to my mission here on Earth.

00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:58.468
Then again, when do we ever know
where love's first flutter

00:03:58.468 --> 00:03:59.942
will truly take us.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:59.942 --> 00:04:01.171
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:01.171 --> 00:04:04.471
(Applause)