Elena Maria Rossi receives Vici
Mysterious supermassive black holes...
It is a mystery how supermassive black holes formed. We know that they were born small in the childhood of the universe. And we know that they are now at least a million times more massive than the Sun. But what happened in the meantime is still unclear. Elena Maria Rossi's Vici project (Leiden University) investigates baby giants, light black holes that are likely to develop into supermassive variants. Rossi uses the light that comes from stars that are rapaciously pulled apart and devoured by the baby giants. She combines the most modern simulations with the available data.