Aaron Barth, physics & astronomy associate professor, will discuss "Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies" as part of the 2009-10 Discover the Physical Sciences Breakfast Lecture Series. The UC Irvine School of Physical Sciences is hosting this event.

Black holes are among the strangest and most fascinating objects in the universe. Over the past decade, astronomers have determined that giant black holes exist in the centers of most large galaxies, including the Milky Way. The role black holes play in the formation and evolution of galaxies is the subject of extensive astrophysical research.

Barth will describe the methods astronomers employ to discover black holes and will talk about his research group's efforts to determine the properties of black holes in nearby galaxies with data from the Lick and Keck observatories. Barth also uses NASA space-based observatories to investigate black holes and their galactic environments.

As an undergraduate, Barth studied physics at Yale. He earned a master's in physics from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in astronomy from UC Berkeley. Barth joined the UCI faculty in 2004 after a postdoctoral appointment at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a Hubble Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. He received a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2006.