Researchers focus on the Milky Way
Jason Dexter and Gregory Brennecka are coming to Germany.
Two Americans are among the winners of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s 2014 Sofja Kovalevskaja Awards. The junior researchers will receive up to 1.65 million euros in prize money to fund innovative projects. At the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching near Munich, Jason Dexter will be using his share to test the general theory of relativity on supermassive black holes. He hopes to find explanations for phenomena around the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Dexter is also involved in the project Event Horizon Telescope, in which radio telescopes on different continents are being linked up in order to obtain increasingly precise insights into the center of our Milky Way and other galaxies.
The Milky Way is also Gregory Brennecka’s research specialty: the cosmochemist analyzes the first minerals formed in the solar system, which have been discovered in meteorites. They have prompted him to theorize that our solar system was changed by a supernova shortly after its creation. Brennecka will be continuing his research at the University of Münster.
