This event was recorded on July 1, 2026 at Flug Forum, produced by Aspen Center for Physics, in partnership with Aspen Public Radio.
Which came first, the black hole or the galaxy? And how did black holes grow to be billions of times the mass of our Sun? Astronomers have made remarkable progress in answering these questions in the past five years, in large part thanks to the advent of the James Webb Space Telescope. Jenny Green discusses how the mysterious “Little Red Dots” discovered by James Webb may ultimately reveal the origin of supermassive black holes.
About Jenny Greene
Jenny Greene is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. She studies supermassive black holes and the galaxies that they live in. As an observer, she uses facilities all over the world and in space to find black holes at all masses and redshifts, but also to study the masses, structures, and star formation histories of their hosts. She is also the faculty director of the Princeton Prison Teaching Initiative, and recently was awarded a Presidential award for Science Mentoring from the Biden administration for her work.