Strong Gravity News & Events

Gr@v students M. Brito, J. Ferreira and M. Mariano were amongst the participants of the New Frontiers in Strong Gravity meeting in Benasque, in July 2026. 

João Novo successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis with title Light rings, shadows and geodesic structure
of four and five dimensional spacetimes on July 27th 2026. The Ph.D. committe was composed by  Astrid Eichhorn, Volker Perlick, Petya Georgieva, António Morais, Pedro Cunha (co-advisor) and João Matias (president). The thesis was advised by C. Herdeiro. Congratulations João!  

The X Amazonian Workshop on Gravity and Analogue Models took place in Belém, Brazil. Since 2012 these events have gathered the international community on the topic, often with the participation of Gr@v (including the first edition). This edition was also part of the NewFunFiCO network.

Recent investigations into non-vacuum general relativity and parametrized spacetimes have reported viable black hole solutions that admit multiple photon spheres.

"The extreme gravity of astrophysical compact objects", a workshop integrated in the NewFunFiCO network took place in Frankfurt in June 2026. A great atmosphere, a variety of interesting science and lively discussions made a great event. The photo was taken in the rooftop of the venue, the historical building where the Stern-Gerlach experiment was conducted in 1922. 

Member of Gr@v H. Olivares participated at the Spanish and Portuguese Relativity Meeting 2026, held in Murcia, Spain, to deliver an invited talk on simulating and observing black hole mimickers.

We got together on May 20th 2026 at Etevaldo's favourite restaurant in Aveiro (O Telheiro), to celebrate his 4.5 years in Gr@v. In the same day we had an excellent seminar from Hryhorii Ovcharenko, visiting from Prague. Etevaldo is now starting a post-doctoral position in Brazil. Many thanks, Etevaldo, for being with us. See you soon!

We investigate the absorption of massless scalar waves by three distinct hairy black hole solutions obtained through the gravitational decoupling method, considering  the weak, the strong or the dominant energy conditions.