August 11, 2020

Dark Frontiers: The Science of Black Holes

How massive can black holes become? How do astronomers typically observe them? How do they die? Scientific American presents a conversation about these mysterious cosmic phenomena with Yale University astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan.

By Priyamvada Natarajan, Lee Billings, Sunya Bhutta, Jeffery DelViscio & Macarena Carrizosa

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Priyamvada Natarajan is a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale University whose research focuses on cosmology, gravitational lensing and black hole physics.

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Lee Billings is a science journalist specializing in astronomy, physics, planetary science, and spaceflight, and is a senior editor at Scientific American. He is the author of a critically acclaimed book, Five Billion Years of Solitude: the Search for Life Among the Stars, which in 2014 won a Science Communication Award from the American Institute of Physics. In addition to his work for Scientific American, Billings's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Wired, New Scientist, Popular Science, and many other publications. A dynamic public speaker, Billings has given invited talks for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Google, and has served as M.C. for events held by National Geographic, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, Pioneer Works, and various other organizations.

Billings joined Scientific American in 2014, and previously worked as a staff editor at SEED magazine. He holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

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Sunya Bhutta is an audience-development strategist and chief audience engagement editor at Scientific American. Previously she was associate editor at Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. Her work has also been published in Time Out New York, Chronogram and Hudson Valley magazine. She has a B.A. in English and journalism from SUNY New Paltz and studied magazine and website publishing at New York University.

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Jeff DelViscio is currently chief multimedia editor/executive producer at Scientific American. He is former director of multimedia at STAT, where he oversaw all visual, audio and interactive journalism. Before that, he spent more than eight years at the New York Times, where he worked on five different desks across the paper. He holds dual master's degrees from Columbia University in journalism and in earth and environmental sciences. He has worked aboard oceanographic research vessels and tracked money and politics in science from Washington, D.C. He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. His work has won numerous awards, including two News and Documentary Emmy Awards.

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