Goddard scientists receive Lindsay Award for black hole research

GREENBELT, Md. - Dr. Joan M. Centrella and Dr. John G. Baker are the 2008 recipients of the John C. Lindsay Memorial Award for Space Science. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., honors one or more of its civil servant space scientists each year with this award, which is the center's highest honor for outstanding contributions in space science.

Centrella and Baker will receive their awards on May 30 for their groundbreaking computer simulations, which show what happens when two supermassive black holes collide and merge. Centrella serves as director of Goddard's Gravitational Astrophysics Laboratory. Baker is an astrophysicist with the Numerical Relativistic Astrophysics Group.

"Our simulations are achieved by a team of scientists with diverse skills, ranging from building large computer programs to understanding details of Einstein's theory," says Centrella.

"We have an outstanding team of both civil servants and contractors," adds Baker. "The Lindsay Award recognizes the contributions of everyone in our group."

According to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, when two black holes merge, the surrounding space trembles like an earthquake as gravitational waves race outward at light speed. For 30 years, attempts to simulate these dramatic collisions on computers failed because of the complexity of the mathematics, which caused computer codes to crash. But the Goddard team developed a method to translate Einstein's equations into a form that computers can handle. Teams around the world are now using the techniques developed by the Goddard group.

Black hole mergers are by far the most powerful events in the universe since the Big Bang. Supermassive black holes reside in the centers of most or all large galaxies, so black hole mergers have played a pivotal role in the construction of galaxies. Understanding these collisions is essential to understanding cosmic evolution.