The Physics of Cosmic Lighthouses

Dr. Maria Rodriguez is the principal investigator of this National Science Foundation (NSF) award that will support research at USU on relativistic outflow mechanisms from black holes. Graduate students funded through this grant will identify the mechanisms that generates energy flows at the edge of rapidly spinning black holes and study how the electromagnetic fields in black holes originate and organize in space.

Combined with the unprecedented observational data that will soon become available the present interdisciplinary theoretical research has the potential to radically enhance our knowledge in gravitation, mathematical physics, and astrophysics.