Astrophysics News & Events

Gr@v PhD student Manuel Mariano is visiting Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, US, for a month. There he presented a seminar entitled “There and back again: outspiralling motion in non-Kerr compact objects”.

On Oct. 22nd 2025 we had the visit of João Dinis Álvares, who completed his M.Sc. at IST-Lisbon. João gave an interesting talk on the evolution of scalar fields around black holes and also shared with us that he decided to study physics after an outreach talk by Gr@v members, in Braga, back in 2017. Thank you João, for the kind words and all the best for your Ph.D. abroad!

On Thursday Oct 23rd, CERN organizes a topical meeting on "New Bosons from Astrophysical sources @ LHC: the case of boson stars". C. Herdeiro is one of the invited speakers. 

Two 3-month grants for M.Sc. holders are open within the project 2024.05617.CERN, "Towards precision tests of ultralight dark matter with imaging and gravitational waves". Applications should be submitted between 13 and 24 October 2025. More info in the attached files and the Euraxess site.

In the last year three Gr@v members obtained faculty positions (as Assistant Professors) in Portuguese Universities: António Morais (Physics Dept., U. Minho), Miguel Zilhão (Physics Dept., U. Aveiro), Pedro Cunha (Mathematics Dept., U. Aveiro). Congratulations to António, Miguel and Pedro for this great achievement!

The annual global study led by John Ioannidis (Stanford University, USA), based on Elsevier’s Scopus citation data for 2024, ranked the world’s most influential scientists. The list includes 3 from Gr@v: P. Cunha, C. Herdeiro and E. Radu. See here the U. Aveiro coverage.

The VII Amazonian Symposium in Physics took place in the week of Sep. 23rd 2025. Another stimulating meeting with great talks and scientific interaction. Thank you to all participants and Prof. Luis Crispino for his leadership.

Listen here to the contribution of C. Herdeiro to the spanish podcast "Oscilador Armónico", chating with Isabel Cordero Carrión and António Rivera Nebot about black holes and exotic compact objects (in spanish).

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a consortium including our group member Hector Olivares, has revealed new detailed images of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87 — known as M87* — which show a dynamic environment, with changing polarization patterns near the black hole. More: Video explanation, UA online, EHT website.

On September 14, the Fábrica Centro de Ciência Viva de Aveiro hosted a full-day event dedicated to gravitational waves and gravitation, bringing together audiences of all ages to celebrate science, discovery, and knowledge sharing.