Nominator's project description
| Dr. Jason Dexter, University of California, Berkeley, USA
The year 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's Theory of Relativity (GR). One of its spectacular predictions is the existence of astrophysical black holes and their 'communication barrier', called the event horizon. GR has passed with flying colors all tests in the laboratory, the Solar System and binary pulsars. Several observationally extremely challenging tests will be conducted in the next decade to check whether GR is applicable also in the extreme environment of the best massive black hole candidate, the radio source SgrA* in the Milky Way Center. By simulating the "accretion zone" surrounding such black holes, Dr. Dexter will be in a unique position to interpret these observations and turn them into sensitive tests for GR. His work is world leading in following the complex dynamical processes of the relativistic plasma close to the event horizon and in calculating the radiation transport toward the observer.
Dr. Dexter is hosted by Professor Reinhard Genzel at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching near Munich, Germany. |
