Science & Cocktails Johannesburg Date: 1 November 2016 Speaker: Zoltán Haiman (Columbia University) Monster black holes at the edge of the universe How large are the largest black holes? How did they get so big? Can two black holes merge to make a bigger black hole? Over the last 10 years or so, astronomers have accumulated convincing evidence that black holes are not only "real" and exist, but are ubiquitous in nature, coming in a broad range of sizes. Large black holes are found to reside at the center of every galaxy, and very massive ones, several billion times heavier than our own Sun, are known to have formed already within a mere 700 million years after the Big Bang. This special session of Science & Cocktails Johannesburg will be guided by astrophysicist Zoltán Haiman, visiting from Columbia University. Prof. Haiman will take us on a journey back to the earliest days of the Universe, to the time when the first stars after the big bang were born. He will discuss when these stars died and what their fate was, and speculate about how the most massive known black holes may have formed and evolved throughout the history of the cosmos. http://www.scienceandcocktails.org/jozi https://www.facebook.com/scienceandcocktailsjozi @SciCocktailsJHB