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Explore groundbreaking astrophysics research in this 30-minute SETI Live webinar that examines how galaxy mergers trigger the growth of supermassive black holes using data from the European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope. Join host Dr. Moiya McTier and lead researchers Dr. Berta Margalef-Bentabol, Dr. Lingyu Wang, and Dr. Antonio la Marca from the Space Research Organisation Netherlands as they discuss two new studies analyzing over one million galaxies to test the long-standing hypothesis connecting cosmic collisions to active galactic nuclei. Discover how astronomers combine vast sky surveys, machine learning, and multi-wavelength observations to identify when and why active galactic nuclei ignite, revealing that galaxies undergoing mergers are significantly more likely to host actively feeding black holes and that the brightest active galactic nuclei almost exclusively occur during cosmic collisions. Learn about Euclid's revolutionary ability to identify merging galaxies at unprecedented scale, understand how researchers measure black hole contributions to galactic light output, and gain insights into the coevolution of galaxies and their central supermassive black holes. Examine the implications of these findings for our understanding of cosmic structure formation and look ahead to future discoveries as Euclid's survey expands to encompass billions of galaxies across the observable universe.
